


Tainted

by WhatWouldLilyDo



Series: Frogs [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: (secret relationships plural??), Anxiety, Coming Out, Dex's POV, Established Relationship, F/M, Family Issues, Fear of Discovery, Foster Care, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Secret Relationship, You've been warned, and still attempting to be as canon compliant as is possible despite some of those hcs, bitty's 3rd year, follows on from fresh so all the same hcs there, potential for later make up? but not in this fic, this fic is like a slow burn to a break up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-05-20 05:47:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 52,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14888784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatWouldLilyDo/pseuds/WhatWouldLilyDo
Summary: Things were going so well and Will had been naive to think that would continue. Everything falling apart was inevitable. He tainted everything he touched.The sequel to Fresh. Dex's point of view.





	1. Summer in Maine

**Author's Note:**

> This has been a long time coming oh boyyy. Still a WIP but I have all the chapters planned out which is better than when I started posting Fresh, I think, so there's that.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *voice-over* Previously, in Fresh
> 
> *montage of clips of the Frogs being best friends*  
> *cut to Fresh chapter 16, where Dex and Chowder come out to each other (Dex as gay and being in a secret relationship with Nursey, and Chowder as being trans)*  
> *dramatic montage to show Dex telling Chowder, Nursey and Farmer about how his parents and twin sister, Jess, died and then getting his anxiety disorder diagnoses (Fresh chapter 14)*  
> *ends on Dex saying goodbye to Chowder, Nursey and Farmer in the Amtrak station at the end of freshman year*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (look it's hard to summarize an 18 chapter story into a previously thing. I can only imagine it like they'd do it on a tv show)
> 
> A lot of this fic is going to be about being closeted, coming out, and Dex's anxiety over both of these things. We're diving straight into that from the beginning. I will therefore not be warning for these except for chapters where it is very extreme, because it will probably crop up to some extent every chapter. If this isn't something you feel comfortable reading, this isn't the fic for you.
> 
> Other content warnings for this chapter: past family death, grief/mourning, general anxiety, compulsions

**Prologue**

* * *

_June 21st 2015_

#### First NWHL Draft Sparks Controversy

NWHL draft pick Micaela Alves Guimaraes will not be accepting a contract with the Connecticut Whale, despite the ideal location for the youngster. The Whale will play in Stamford, CT, which is much closer to the New Haven house where Micaela’s guardians currently live than Marlborough, MA, home of the New England Hockey Club where the Brazilian-born forward first came into the public’s awareness. However, following the draft, Micaela posted on Twitter, “I didn’t enter the NWHL draft. None of us did. But I entered the NHL draft. I’m tired of playing on girl teams. I’m trans, and I’m a boy.” Later, another tweet added, “Let’s see what happens next week but I’m happy to say I’ve found a school to take me on their men’s NCAA team for next year”. Both Micaela and the NCAA refused to reveal which school it was, but a spokesperson from the NCAA said, Micaela is “not the first trans man to play NCAA Division I Men’s Hockey.” 

This elicits the question: who was the first? 

* * *

> **Frog Group Chat**  
>    
>  **Nursey**  
>  im sorry?  
>  shouldnt the question actually be which nhl team is going to be lucky enough to sign this fucking bamf of a 17 year old?  
>  have you seen his tapes????  
>  **Dex**  
>  We know who the first was, though, so of course you’re not interested in that question  
>  My question is why they’ve gone to such lengths to avoid using a pronoun  
>  **Chowder**  
>  Why do you think  
>  The same reason the headline calls this a controversy  
>  **Dex**  
>  Well yeah  
>  But ughh  
>  **Nursey**  
>  you know you screwed up when you get dex to actually type out the word ugh  
>  with an extra h on the end  
>  **Chowder**  
>  Everything about this sucks  
>  Did you see his Twitter?  
>  **Nursey**  
>  no, he’d deleted his account by the time i saw the news  
>  **Dex**  
>  Same, but I saw the screenshots that Ransom retweeted  
>  **Nursey**  
>  wait what  
>  OMG  
>  seen now  
>  **Chowder**  
>  It kills me how obviously he’s been dealing with this so long  
>  **Nursey**  
>  it’s like he came out to everyone and they just ignored him  
>  **Chowder**  
>  I’m 2607% sure that’s what happened  
>  **Dex**  
>  I couldn’t find his name  
>  As in what he’s entered the NHL draft as  
>  As opposed to what this bullshit article insists on calling him  
>  **Chowder**  
>  He entered the draft as Miguel Alves Guimaraes, but rumors online are that he’s changed his name since to something completely different that he’s going to college as and I haven’t been able to find out what that is  
>  **Nursey**  
>  i’m sure we’ll find out soon as the season starts  
>  because while i’d love to say the point is probably that he doesn’t want people to just see him as that trans guy it’s still bound to be leaked  
>  **Dex**  
>  Yeah  
>  **Chowder**  
>  Maybe I could make friends with him!!  
>  Unless he goes to Yale  
>  **Nursey**  
>  or is a Kings supporter  
>  **Chowder**  
>  Fuck  
>  **Dex**  
>  He’s from CT he won’t be a Kings supporter  
>  **Chowder**  
>  We can be friends and go to Falcs games together to see Jack!!!!  
>  **Nursey**  
>  just bros, being trans in men’s ice hockey and chilling at nhl games  
>  **Chowder**  
>  Yeah!!  
>  **Dex**  
>  … I miss you two too much  
>  **Nursey**  
>  YOU LOVE US  
>  **Chowder**  
>  I wish you could come to SF next week too, Dex (Disappointed Face)  
>  **Nursey**  
>  It’s gonna be swaws  
>  **Dex**  
>  (Disappointed Face) 6 weeks to go

* * *

**Chapter One**  
_Four weeks later_

* * *

It was late July, and yet there was a bitter wind blowing through the trees. Sunday, and yet the lane was deserted. The old wall had half-decayed, and the pink bouquet sat on top of it was the only colour in the expanse of green and grey. The place was overgrown with weeds and moss, as if nobody had walked there for years. Tears blurred Will’s vision until he could no longer make out the names scratched unevenly on the stone, and the muddy ground dampened his jeans but he couldn’t find it in him to care.

“Hey there, Billy.”

His breath caught. “Dan? What are you-”

His brother threw him a look which somehow said both ‘come on, Will, you were supposed to be the smart one of us,’ and ‘I’m hurt that you thought I wouldn’t be here.’

Will swallowed back his previous question, and instead asked, “Why did you leave?”

There was a loud sigh, and Dan settled on the ground next to him. “I couldn’t stay there anymore. And there’s more jobs in Portland. Do you remember Tyler? From Hopeless House?” Will nodded. Hopeless House hadn’t been the actual name of the children’s Home they had lived in in Portland, but it was what all of them called it. “We found each other on Facebook and he offered me a place to stay in his apartment. It’s kind of a dump but it’s not too bad. There’s room for you, too, if you need it.”

“But Meg and Chloë…”

“Have their own family now.”

“I’m their family. _We_ are. They need us.”

“I’ve only ever had one sister,” Dan snapped, but his hand was gentle when it reached out to trace Jessica’s name where they had carved it all those years ago. Will flinched. “Look, I know Meg reminds you of her, and I know you ended up being there the day Chloë was born and you’ve got this connection to them, but they’re not blood, Will. They’re practically Buchards, now, and they’ve never been Poindexters. They never will. Brian and Joan are going to adopt them at some point. All the signs are there. It's different to with us, where we were just a couple of cheap teenagers about to age out.” Will tried to interrupt but Dan just talked louder. “Just because you met her when she was twelve, doesn’t make Meg Jess, and just because she wouldn’t let anyone but you read her bedtime story last summer doesn’t make Chloë the fourth child Mom and Dad sometimes talked about having.”

“I care about them.”

“Which only means it’ll hurt more when you can’t see them any more.” Before Will could say anything, Dan held his hand up. “I didn’t come to have this argument with you. I don’t really want it at all, but we definitely shouldn’t argue today.” They both looked back at the makeshift gravestone which named the other three members of their family.

“You should give me your address,” Will finally said. “So I can send your birthday present when it’s time for it.”

Dan let out a breath of relief. “Okay. I’ve got yours in the car. I figured I probably wouldn’t convince you to leave that quickly.”

“You’ve got a car now?”

“It’s my girlfriend’s.”

“And a girlfriend.”

Dan shrugged. Will looked at him for a bit, wondering how he would react if he told him about Derek. He had just decided not to find out when Dan said, “How about you? Got a girl down in Massachusetts?”

Will took a breath. “I- Er, not a girl, no. But my best friend is dating Caitlin Farmer.”

“Not a- Wait. _Caity?_ Our _cousin_ Caitlin Farmer?”

“Yeah, she’s at Samwell, too. What are the odds?”

Dan shook his head in disbelief, and Will thought he had got away with it. He was wrong. “When you say not a _girl…”_

Will didn’t say anything.

“Fuck, Will.”

His tone was more exasperation than anything else and when Will thought of all the times in the past when Dan had told him not to look at other boys, anger rose in him again. “What do you want me to fucking say, Dan? I’m gay. You’ve always known it, you just pretended it was something that would go away if we ignored it hard enough, but it hasn’t and I have a boyfriend and he’s fucking _good_ for me. Jess’d like him.”

“Don’t.” Dan’s voice shook. “Don’t bring her into this. That’s not fair.”

Will scrambled to his feet. “What’s not _fair,_ is that you think it matters.”

He was halfway down the lane when Dan finally responded. “Yeah? Will it still not matter if the Buchards find out? What then, Billy?”

Will didn’t respond.

* * *

Will entered the Buchard home still shaking with fury. Meg frowned at him in concern, but when he shook his head, she didn’t press, and told him that the Buchards had gone grocery shopping and had left her with Chloë. Will could hear Frozen playing in the next room.

He locked them in and curled up at one end of the couch, where Meg could put her feet on his lap, her legs stretching behind Chloë’s back. Will plugged his headphones into his laptop and listened to the playlist that he put on whenever he was missing Samwell while he pulled up some summer coding exercises. After about ten minutes, Meg kicked him in the shin. He pulled out a headphone, and looked over at the TV automatically, expecting it to be on the blink again, but saw nothing wrong.

“What?”

“Someone’s at the door.”

Sure enough, above the sound of Chloë helping Idina Menzel to belt out her famous solo, there was a knocking at the door. Will put his laptop down on the table and grabbed his keys. He fumbled with the lock a moment, then pulled it open and stared at the person on the other side of it. Derek Nurse looked no different to how he had eleven weeks before when they had both left Samwell University for the summer, and yet it was so strange to see him in Maine that Will was sure he was mistaking a complete stranger for his boyfriend.

“What are you doing here?”

“I missed you too, Dexy.” There was no doubt that it was Derek. Nobody else used such a chirpy tone with Will, and nobody else had ever called him Dexy just to tease him. “I was worried. I texted you about thirty times the past two days, and called as well. Did you break your phone?”

Will sighed and pulled him into the house. “I turn it off for the anniversary of the crash,” he said quietly as he locked the door again.

Derek sucked in a breath. “Shit. Shit was that-”

“It’s today, actually, I just turned it off early.”

Meg glanced up at them curiously but didn’t otherwise react to the unexpected guest.

“Billy, watch,” Chloë told him. “And Mister.”

“This is Derek. He’s on the hockey team with me at Samwell. He’s… uh. He’s also my boyfriend. Nursey, this is Chloë and Meg.”

Meg’s eyebrows shot up. Her gaze demanded answers to a thousand questions, but thankfully Derek had no desire to let their reaction drag out. “Oh my god are you watching Frozen?”

Will rolled his eyes and pushed Derek to sit down in his vacated spot on the sofa, then picked up Chloë so that he could take her space and bundle her into his lap. Meg’s head came to rest on Will’s shoulder. Will glanced over at Derek and saw the moment that he realized that he was potentially invading on a moment.

“Do you want me to go? I know… I mean, I came because I was worried, but there wasn’t anything to worry about. Right? So if you guys need to be alone…”

Will gripped onto his wrist. “Stay a bit. Please. You drove all the way up here. They’ve only gone shopping, though, so…”

“Yeah.”

Will's heart beat rapidly in his chest and he was filled with a nervous energy. He stared down at Chloë. Though he knew she was too engrossed in her movie to pay attention to them, and even if she did she had no concept of what a 'boyfriend' was, he wanted to say something. He felt he should explain that this was a secret (even though at two years of age, Chloë didn't really understand secrets either).

“I’m proud of you, Will.” Meg mumbled into his shoulder.

“Vap?” asked Chloë, which Dex had finally worked out last week was what she called frappes now. He put her on Derek’s lap, and gave both of them a smug look which Meg sniggered at. 

“I'm getting Chlo a drink. You want anything, Derek?” he asked, as he got up to go to the kitchen. Derek shook his head, not lifting his bewildered eyes from the toddler on his knees.

When he returned, a lidded cup with a straw in one hand and a glass in the other, Chloë was still sat on his boyfriend, chatting away about Anna and Olaf in her two year old’s version of English.

Will put the drinks on the table, and nudged Meg with his knee as he sat down to let her know that the second frappe was for her. She looked over at Derek, then back at Will and smiled her approval.

When Chloë was more engrossed in the movie than she was demanding their attention, Derek looked over at Will. “I did miss you a ton.”

“Me too. Maybe we’ll have to see if you can stay over tonight. You already drove all the way up here.”

“But—” Derek glanced at the window with uncertainty.

“I know, but— You know. Driving and today. I don’t like it.”

Derek kissed Will’s temple. “Yeah.”

* * *

The end credits were rolling, and Chloë was dancing half a foot away from the television, when a car pulled onto the drive.

“My foster family,” Will choked out, in explanation to Derek, just before there was a key in the door and a woman calling out to him.

“William? Whose is this car on the drive?”

“Uh, this is my teammate from Samwell, Derek,” Will said, dragging Derek into the hallway as his foster parents came into the house. “He was passing. Uh. Driving back from New Brunswick, I mean. And he stopped in to check that I’ve been practising and I said that he shouldn’t be driving all the way back to New York today when it’s already pretty late. Is it okay if he has Dan’s bed?”

The two adults exchanged a look. Will bit his lip and said a silent prayer. The lie had slipped past his lips too naturally, before he could stop it. He dug his fingernails into his hands mentally berating himself. It was stupid and awful and he felt terrible for dragging Derek into this.

“Are you working at the store tomorrow, William?” Brian asked.

“No, I was going to go on the boat, but maybe—”

“I want to be on the road early, anyway,” Derek cut in. Will shot him a look. He probably didn’t realize just how early he had to get up to go to the lobster boat. Derek just smiled back at him.

“What were you doing in New Brunswick?” Will wasn’t sure if an interrogation was a good sign or a bad one, but he tried to keep his nervousness hidden. Chloë walked over to see where they had got to, so he scooped her up to stop his hands from picking at his clothes and betraying him.

Derek put on a forcibly polite smile. “Actually, I only drove through New Brunswick, but we have another teammate who lives on Prince Edward Island. Visscher. Backup goalie.”

Will had completely forgotten about the Canadian on their team who wasn’t Jack or Ransom. He pressed his face into Chloë’s hair and tried to breathe.

“And you should be driving to New York?”

“That’s right, sir. I’m from Manhattan.”

“Do your parents expect you there today?”

“My parents are away. I’ll be going back to an empty house. As long as I’m okay, and there to pick them up from the airport on Wednesday, they don’t mind where I am. I told them that I might visit some people from Samwell so that I didn’t get bored at home.”

Will could have kissed Derek if it wouldn’t have made it very obvious to the Buchards what they were to each other. Even before they confirmed it, he knew what they were going to say, just because of Derek’s easy admittance that he would be home alone.

“You had better stay the night then, young man.”

“Derek, sir.” He held his hand out for Brian to shake. Will wasn’t surprised that his foster father didn’t offer up his own name or hand in return.

With the conversation over, Derek went to get his duffle bag out the back of his car, and then Will showed him to the room that he and Dan used to share. He put Chloë down on his bed where she immediately burrowed into the covers.

“I saw Dan today,” Will said quietly, staring at his brother's bed. When Derek hummed questioningly, Will took it as encouragement to elaborate, and soon his mouth was running away from him. “At the place we sort of made into a grave. We always go the time of the crash and I guess he knew I wouldn’t stray away from that. He tried to get me to move out of here and sleep on some couch with an old kid from one of the Homes and his girlfriend. But I don’t think I’m invited any more. I told him about you. He said… It’s weird sometimes, you know? Not knowing how they’d react to that. Because we hadn’t got to the age where they needed to reassure us that whoever we dated they wouldn’t care, or to let us know otherwise. I like to think they wouldn’t mind, but how can I know what any of them would think of me and you? I know it shouldn’t matter, but—”

“It still plays on your mind,” Derek filled in. He looked uncomfortable enough that Will's stomach turned. He didn’t talk about his family very often, and however much of a relief it had been to let it all out, he shouldn't pile it on Derek.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to— You okay, baby?” He lowered his voice and stepped closer.

Derek laughed shakily. “I feel like it should be me asking you that.”

“I’ve been living with these thoughts for years, and thanks to you I’ve started to learn how to talk about it. It’s not your problem, so I shouldn’t—”

“You _should_ ,” Derek retorted. “I love you and I’m here for you, even if it’s just to listen when you need to rant.” 

They settled into each other with no real certainty of who had initiated the hug.

“I missed you way more than I thought I would,” Derek muttered. His voice cracked. “I missed you so much so when you didn’t reply, I didn’t think, I just got in the car and drove. I didn’t think I’d get here and interrupt your family time and cause all these issues with your foster family.”

Will ran his fingers along the nape of Derek’s neck with a sigh. “I’m glad you’re here, Derek. I missed you, too. Let’s go out for dinner, yeah?” He glanced back at Chloë, who was pretending to read a Physics textbook. “There’s a good P-I-double-Z-A place nearby which will let you order no cheese.”

Derek grinned at him. “Sounds great. I missed our pizza dates.”

Will winced, as Chloë’s head snapped up to look at them. “Pizza!”

“No, sweet, there’s clam chowder.”

Chloë shook her head. “No. Pizza!”

“Sourdough bread, Chlo!”

_“Pizza!”_

“I can’t believe you were going to eat Chowder if I hadn’t come,” Derek said. “Come on, Poindexter, pull your life together. He’s your _best friend._ ”

* * *

They left Chloë kicking and screaming over pizza with Brian and Joan, explained that Derek was allergic to cow’s milk, and headed out to walk to the pizzaria.

“Not that I eat clams, either.”

Will shook his head. “One of my friends at high school was a vegetarian and when he came to one of the summer cookouts he got landed with a salad bowl. They don’t get people not eating meat but they’d still insist on trying to feed you and trust me it’s better this way.”

Derek rolled his eyes. “I don’t want them to feed me _without_ knowing that I can’t eat dairy. This doesn’t look like the sort of place with a hospital nearby.”

“We’re not in the middle of _nowhere._ We have medical centers and stuff. But I knew they’d be less likely to be funny about us eating out if they knew you had an allergy like that. I don’t think Joan knows how to cook without dairy.”

“You eat that much of it?” Derek sounded surprised.

“Well, yeah. Or not even eating stuff that’s specifically dairy, but things that have been cooked in butter. We get through about four pints of milk a day.” To Derek’s shocked face, he added, “Milk is the only drink Chloë will have. Or frappes, but they’re pretty much just milk and ice cream.”

“That’s so wild,” Derek said. “My moms had to work a little bit to get used to not cooking with milk after they found out about my allergy, but it wasn’t that difficult. They found they didn’t use much of it anyway, and it was all the processed food that was more awkward because sometimes things you wouldn’t expect to have milk in do.”

Will thought about it. “I think it would affect every single meal here. I know sometimes it’s easy enough to use a substitute but then other things- Well. Bitty’s managed to make pie crust without butter work, but I can’t imagine a margarine croissant being as good.”

Derek tripped over his own feet and Will automatically reached out to steady him, one arm gripping onto his waist and the other hovering in front of him just in case.

“Croissants?” Derek repeated. Surprise colored his voice, and when Will searched his face for some clue about what he was thinking, he stared back with a raised eyebrow and a look of incredulity.

“Uh. Yes? They’re a pastry? Made by layering butter and dough and folding it up so it’s laminated?”

“I know what they— You know how to _make them?”_

Will’s hands tensed, and he felt Derek flinch when he accidentally squeezed too hard on his hip. Jerked into awareness of where they are and how close they were standing, Will drew away from Derek like he had received an electric shock. “Sorry,” he said, dropping his hand. This had been a bad conversation to end up on, but now that it had come up and Derek was waiting for an answer, Will wasn’t sure how to deflect. He swallowed against the bile rising in his throat, and forced himself to explain. “My mom used to make them. It was, uh. It was our special treat for birthdays and other important days.”

Derek started to reach out, but he glanced around the street and seemed to think better of it. His arms fell uselessly by his side. “Oh,” was all he said.

“Yeah, so.” Will swallowed again. “I’ve never been able to enjoy store-bought ones. I don’t know if it’s because nostalgia makes me think Mom’s were better or— Or what. But I don’t think I could bring myself to try and make them myself.” He started walking, again, because the pizzeria was only one block away now and he wanted to get there before Derek tried to push this conversation.

To his surprise, Derek remained silent until they were a couple of feet away from the restaurant.

“Did you used to help her? Baking?”

Will stared at their reflection in the pizzeria window. He looked harried and stressed; too thin despite trying to bulk up for preseason; sunburnt and yet sickly pale underneath and the spots he had been breaking out in were more prominent than his freckles. He looked terrible anyway, but even more so stood next to Derek, with his flawlessly clear skin and effortless style which wasn’t even crumpled from his long drive earlier. His eyes sparkled with life and health, and a hint of curiosity, presumably over whether he had just discovered why Will was the only Frog Bitty allowed to help in the kitchen.

“Uh, yeah. Sometimes. I was just a kid, though. I don’t think I was much help.”

Derek looked skeptical, but he pressed his lips together and pushed open the door of the restaurant.

The hostess was a girl who had been at school with Will. She lit up in recognition when she saw him, but he could tell that she didn’t know what to say to him, either because they hadn’t been friends, or she couldn’t remember his name.

“Hi,” he said, to avoid an awkward conversation about what he was doing these days with this girl he barely ever knew. “Table for two?”

“Sorry,” Derek cut in, as she picked up a couple of menus. “I’d just like to check before you seat us. Will here said that you do vegan options, but I actually have a milk allergy so I need to know that can be accommodated before-”

“Oh!” The girl’s eyes widened and she glanced between them before she nodded. Will pressed his fist deep into his pocket, digging his nails into his thigh through the fabric. It was strange hearing Derek call him Will in public. “Of course. We use a separate oven for our vegan pizzas, and we’ll make sure the chefs know to be extra vigilant about contamination. Were you wanting a cheese-free pizza with meat? Because that is a possibility, but we would normally—”

Derek shaking his head was enough for her to trail off. “That’s okay. I don’t really eat meat, either. Vegan is perfect.”

She led them to a table, and put the menus down on the place settings for them. Will had just thought he had avoided any chatter with her, when, as she filled their water glasses for them, she flashed him a smile. “So, Will. You went to college, right? Where did you go again?”

Will cursed Derek in his head for successfully jogging her memory. He still wasn’t sure who she was. “Samwell. In Massachusetts.”

“Cool,” she nodded, and he could tell she had never heard of the place. Most of their class had gone to UMaine or a community college, if anywhere. The few who hadn’t were high flyers now at Ivy League schools, or the people who had desperately wanted to get out of New England. “You’re… track team, right?”

Perhaps she wasn’t one hundred percent sure of who he was, Will thought, as she looked him up and down. It was probably for the best. There had been a few Wills in their class and most people knew there were rumors about ‘Will and John’ but most people didn’t know which Will or which John, or what parts of the rumors were real. Will pinched himself under the table to try to bring his thoughts back to the present.

“Ice hockey,” he corrected.

“Oh.” She nodded, seeming to have run out of things to say. “Well I’ll let you two enjoy your, uh, evening. A server will be along in a bit to take your order.” She disappeared again, and Will tapped anxiously on the legs of his chair. He had imagined that hesitation. She didn’t think they were on a date. She didn’t know what they were to each other. They could so easily just be friends out for pizza. This wasn’t even a date place. Nobody here was on a date. Except possibly the awkward teenagers by the window who were avoiding each other’s eyes, and the other teenagers feeding each other pizza at the table by the bar.

Will forced himself to smile at Derek, who was eyeing him up warily. Will ignored the look. “A large each? They say it’s enough to share, and they’ll probably try and convince us we just want smalls if we’re having one each, but-”

“But you need to put on weight.”

“Shut up.” Will grinned down at the table. “You’re supposed to be getting ready for the season, too.”

“I’m not a stick like you.”

Will was saved the trouble of coming up with a retort by the appearance of a server asking them if they were ready to order. As Will had predicted, they tried to talk them out of ordering a large pizza each, but let it drop pretty quickly after the words ‘athletes’ and ‘bulking up’ were mentioned.

“Not that pizza is the best thing to bulk up on,” Derek said after the server had left.

“It’s the calories that matter,” Will said. “And they use natural ingredients and all that here. It’s not exactly _bad._ Well. It’s not for those of us who eat the toppings with a decent amount of protein.”

Derek snorted. “Okay, Jack. You enjoy your dead bird pizza, and I’ll enjoy my one with all the healthy vegetables on.”

Will couldn’t help the fond smile which crept onto his face. It probably revealed more than he wanted the strangers in the restaurant to know, but he had missed Derek and wanted nothing more than to show him how much. He pressed his foot against Derek’s; it was the closest to ‘I love you’ he could manage in the situation.

“So,” Derek said. There was something pointed in his tone. Will raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re amazing with kids.”

A surprised hum left Will. “I am?”

“You’ve totally got the protective older brother, slash caring pseudo-Dad thing down.”

“I—” Will choked. He didn’t think himself as Chloë’s dad. He wasn’t even _nineteen_ yet, for God’s sake.

“Don’t try and deny it,” Derek said, with a grin, then he dropped his voice to no more than a whisper. “Anyway, it’s kind of hot.”

For the first time that summer, Will was glad for his sunburn. It probably hid the worst of his blush. “It’s not that big a deal.”

“I don’t know. Hearing you call someone ‘sweet’ and let them mess up your bed is a pretty big deal. Especially coming from you.”

That made Will pause. He knew where Derek was coming from, because Will wasn’t great with expressing his feelings, and he was even worse with seeing people disrupt his careful order and organization, but he didn’t think it was so strange. He clicked his tongue.

“Is it though?” he asked, uncertainly, “I’ve called you _baby_ before. And I let you— I mean— I wouldn’t freak out any more if you messed my bed up either.”

“I’ve messed your bed up before.”

Will fought a smirk. “That’s different. But- It’s just- It’s not like I can be pissed at _Chloë._ I couldn’t be pissed at you, either.”

“That doesn’t sound like William Poindexter at all,” Derek said, with a raised eyebrow. “Word on the street is he is not my biggest fan.”

“I love you, but I can’t compete with your moms for biggest Nursey fan.”

“Or Chowder.”

Will grinned. “Nah, I’ll compete with him. Tell me about San Francisco. Did you stop him from getting any sleep?”

“Me? Would I ever?”

“It must have been three a.m. there when you two Skyped me that time.”

“Look, Poindexter, you can’t judge me for staying up late when you were up at six on your day off.”

“You try living with a two year old and staying asleep when she’s awake.”

* * *

It felt too cozy, cuddling with his boyfriend when the alarm went off at four the next morning, but Will forced himself up, tugged an extra sweater on and twisted his hand around Derek’s as they crept down the stairs. It took a little searching before he found oatmeal, but he remembered they didn't have any milk substitute, and Derek didn’t like it made with just water. His finger tapped against the oatmeal box five times in quick succession.

“Shit. You can't have this. We don't have anything you can eat.”

Derek glanced blearily around the kitchen, still looking as if he might fall back to sleep at the table. Will gave into the urge to tap the closest chair to him. “Toast? Peanut butter?”

“Chloë’s allergic to peanuts. We don't keep any in.”

Nursey squeezed his hand. “Do you have any jelly? I’ll just have the jelly.”

Will felt a tension leave his shoulders, though he still gave the cabinet a tap as he put the oatmeal away. The toaster only worked one slice at a time, so he left the rest of the bread piled up next to it while he dug around for jelly. Derek helped himself to a banana and Will started a coffee pot going.

They ate in silence and sipped on coffee, the two of them sharing sleepy smiles over the table. Then they went to brush their teeth, and were just leaving the bathroom when Chloë came out of her and Meg’s room.

“Morning!”

“Not yet, sweet, but I’m going to work and Derek has to go.” Quickly and quietly before anyone was awake; that's how they had decided was easiest.

“B'ere?”

“Home.”

Chloë considered this and looked up at Derek. “Okay. Go home; come back; stay more.”

Derek laughed. “Yeah? That seems like a reasonable deal. I'll have to see what I can do. Maybe next summer?”

To Will’s surprise, Chloë bounded straight into Derek’s arms, her legs wrapping around his thighs before he managed to lift her up onto his hips. Derek looked at Will with wide eyes for a moment, but he stooped to make sure he wasn’t going to drop her, and hugged her back tightly. “Keep an eye on Will for me, will you, kiddo?” he said. “He needs looking after.”

When Chloë was finally back on her own two feet, she nodded seriously. Will rolled his eyes. “Now back to bed for a couple of hours, okay?” he told her.

Once her door had closed behind her, Derek grabbed his bag from Will's room and the two of them went together to his car.

“Drive safely.” Will's chest ached to see Derek go. He hadn’t expected to see him for another two weeks, but now that he had, him leaving had come much too soon.

“I will,” Derek promised, and he sealed it with a kiss. “I’ll text you when I get home.”

The sounds of Brian moving around upstairs reminded Will that he couldn’t cry. Instead he gave Derek a final wave off and retreated into the house to gather his gear together for the boat.

 


	2. Frogs and Taddies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back to Samwell

The last days of the holidays went a lot quicker with Will knowing that there was someone looking out for him even when he wasn’t asking for it. He was attentive to keeping his phone charged and had promised himself that he wouldn’t turn it off again, as long as he or Derek might need each other.

“Chloë won’t stop talking about you,” He told Derek during one of their now-nightly Skype calls, four days later. He had his headphones in and was talking quietly so as not to be overheard, but it was hard not to laugh at the thought of the toddler being so smitten with his boyfriend. “She wants to know when you’re coming back.”

“I was thinking about that, actually. Did you have any more thoughts on how you’re getting to Samwell?”

Will gave Derek a funny look. “I told you. I’ll have to get the train. I haven’t booked a ticket yet, but I get paid tomorrow so-”

“Or I could come and pick you up.” There was a clatter as Derek knocked over a pot of pens in response to Will’s glare. “I know what you’re going to say. It’s out of my way. I don’t _care,_ Will, I want to see you as soon as I can. I’d rather come and get you, and have those few extra hours with you than be sat in Boston hoping Amtrak is on time. It’ll be quicker for you; I’ll get to see you sooner; I’ll even get myself some Chloë hugs. It’s a win-win situation.”

“I can’t-”

“I’ll even let you give me gas money.”

Will’s lips twitched into a smile. He wasn’t sure if it was more frustrating or endearing that Derek knew exactly what made him hesitate. “Fine. Chloë will be happy to see you.”

“I’ll be happy to see my favorite Mainer, too.”

Will hung up on him. Twenty seconds later, he hit the call button again and they were both laughing when it connected.

* * *

A week later, Chloë was sat on the hood of Derek’s car while the boys tried to rearrange the trunk to make everything fit.

“I go,” she announced the minute Derek closed the trunk.

“Sorry, sweet.” Will picked her up. “You’ve got to get through pre-K before they’ll let you go to college.”

“Den?” she asked, hopefully.

“Uh, grade school is pretty important, too.”

He put her down next to Meg, but didn’t let go as he crouched in front of her. “I’ll be back for Christmas. You’ll be having so much fun at tot group and making new friends, you won’t even notice I’ve gone.”

She didn’t look convinced, but she let him hug her and let go.

Will turned to Meg. “Skype me anytime, okay? Whether it’s for a chat or help with calculus, or _anything.”_

Hugs and goodbyes were shared all around, then Will relegated Derek to passenger in his own car and they were on the road.

“Why do you never let me drive?” Derek complained. “It’s my fucking car.”

Will didn’t reply for a bit by pretending to need more concentration on the Maine coastal roads than he really did. “I don’t like being a passenger,” he finally said. Out of the corner of his eye, Derek jumped and turned his face away from the view to look at him. “Especially when I know you already drove up from New York today and you’re probably tired, but mostly I just like to be in control of the car.”

“Oh. Sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up. I mean, I wasn’t really expecting an answer anyway.”

“It’s okay. You’re right, it’s your car.”

“I don’t even care, though. I was never the biggest fan of driving. You’re always welcome to drive it for me. I won’t pay you for it because that would be weird, but if we ever break up, I’ll hire you as my chauffeur.”

That, at least, helped Will relax. “Don’t do that. Fuck, I’ve missed you.”

* * *

Their dorms this year were in a block of singles reserved for sophomores. Their request to be next-door to each other had been honored, and they dragged everything up to the stretch of fifth floor corridor outside of their adjacent rooms before they started sorting out what needed to be in each room. Will insisted on them sorting their rooms out straight away; unpacking and cleaning and making the beds so that it could feel a little like home, but they left their doors wide open as they did so. Derek put on music (all hip hop Will had never heard before, but which Derek sang along to under his breath, as if he didn’t really mean to) and occasionally they would call out to each other, a comment about how something of Derek’s had got mixed up with Will’s things, or a memory about the blanket fort they had made at the end of last term or a ‘ _Fuck,_ I think I forgot my razor,’ followed by, ‘For fuck’s sake, Nurse.’

Will finished first. He went to find the vaccuum cleaner and after taking it back to the supply closet, he stopped in Derek’s doorway, watching as he tacked photos along the top of his wall.

“Is that from San Francisco?” he asked. Derek nearly fell off the chair he was stood on, and Will darted forwards to catch him, but he couldn’t help a chirpy grin. “Sorry. I should know not to sneak up on you like that.”

Derek looked down at the photo in his hand, holding it low so that Will could see, too. It portrayed him, Chowder and Caitlin bunched together to take a selfie, each holding a cup of brightly colored bubble tea.

“Was it everything Chowder promised and more?”

“It’s the exact same thing I’ve had from any other bubble tea shop.”

Will snorted and leaned into Derek’s body. Derek’s cardigan was soft against Will’s cheek, and he sighed happily when Derek scraped his fingers through his hair.

“It didn’t feel right without you there.”

Will hummed. “I don’t believe that. C’s your best friend, and you get on well with Cait.”

“Yeah, but they’re a _couple_.”

The faux-distain in his voice wasn’t enough to mask what he was really feeling. Will lay his hand on Derek’s hip and squeezed comfortingly. He swayed backwards so that he could look up at him and see the way he stared at a picture of the two of them from last year - a sneaky shot Jack had taken of them and then emailed to them both after term had ended with a comment about how they might like to have proof they can get along sometimes. They were sat by each other in a booth at Jerry’s, both giggling over something (Will couldn’t remember what) and leaning into each other in a way that had become natural to them at some point, even if none of the team noticed.

“I missed you, too,” Will said.

Derek’s eyes slid to him. “I didn’t say—”

“No, but that’s what you meant.”

When Derek tried to look away from him, Will stepped up onto the chair with him. The small space for their feet ensured that their knees kissed and their chests brushed against each other. Will’s hand remained on Derek’s hip, his other finding the small of his back to hold him safe and secure.

“It’s okay,” he told him. “You’re allowed to miss me. I missed you, too. And— And if you’re jealous of C and Cait for being able to spend all summer together— I think that’s a pretty natural feeling too? Even if it sucks to feel that when it’s your best friend. But I get it. I felt it, too, so—”

Derek pressed his face into Will’s shoulder. “I just-” he said, his voice muffled by Will’s shirt. “I know the summer’s barely even over, but I keep thinking how I’m going to have to miss you all over again next year.”

Will’s nose nudged at Derek’s neck and he moved his hand to draw reassuring circles on his back. His instict was to tell him that next year they would just have to stay together; do what Chowder and Cait did this year and plan their summers around each other. He knew, though, it was unlikely to work out that way. His own anxiety wouldn’t let him have Derek in Maine for too long, after all. “Next summer’s a long way away,” he deflected.

He felt Derek’s sigh through his chest. Derek gripped onto the hem of Will’s top and lifted his head so his chin rested on Will’s shoulder. “Can we get down now?”

“We’re a foot and a half off the ground.”

“And it’s _horrible._ I can’t even see my feet.”

Will chuckled. “Okay. You get down and I’ll finish putting these pictures up.” He took Derek’s hand to help him off the chair.

* * *

Will had to restrain himself from falling into Derek’s arms when they got to the Haus an hour later to find the smell of pear tart filling the air. He settled for hugging a surprised Bitty and muttering, “I missed you so much.” He couldn’t let go before Derek jumped into the mix.

“Boys! They’re here!” Bitty called up the stairs, before turning back to Derek and Will. “Lardo gets in tomorrow, then we’ll have a Haus-full. Freshman dorms open Monday, so team meals in the dining hall all of that first week are mandatory, okay?”

“Bro, Bitty’s trying to take our job again,” Ransom’s voice called out from the hall. Holster’s heavy footsteps quickened on the stairs.

“Bitty, bro, stop that. Save the captain voice for next year. Hey, there’s our favorite protégé d-men!”

Will and Derek were pulled into back-slapping hugs by the two captains, their greetings loud enough to drown out the sounds of Bitty arguing that he wouldn't be captain. Soon all four of them were squeezed onto the couch to play a welcome-back game of Mario Kart, plates of tart in their laps, and legs pressed against each other. Whenever he could be sure nobody could see, Will would brush his thumb over Derek’s wrist, and Derek returned the favor, gently checking in with each other.

The Haus door slammed open halfway through their fourth race.

“Oh my God! Is that Nursey’s car outside?” Chowder squealed. He ran into the room, a blur of teal, and flung himself at them. Will’s controller fell to the floor and he choked out a laugh, surprised to find himself with a lap full of 180 pound goalie.

“Hi, C,” Derek said. Will caught his grin over Chowder’s arm. “Did you miss us?”

“So much. Oh! You have to see my room.”

“I won, then,” Holster announced. On the screen, his Bowser cheered at the finish line, while Daisy and Rosalina sat stationary in the middle of the track.

“No way,” Derek argued. “I've already got two first places and a second.” He made no move to defend his title, however, instead throwing his controller onto Ransom’s lap and letting Chowder pull him to his feet.

“Come on,” Chowder urged, grabbing Will’s hand as well. “We have all _year_ to play Mario Kart. Today’s our only first day back at Samwell for sophomore year.”

“Damn, Chowder. First day and you’re already taking people up to your room. Get it!” Holster cheered.

Will’s face heated up before he could remind himself that nobody believed the three of them were hooking up. Nobody on the team - outside the three of them - knew he was gay, and none of them suspected it.

Chowder didn’t bat an eyelid. “You just wait until my girlfriend’s back from the volleyball team’s preseason retreat, Holster.”

“Bro, don’t goad him into having loud sex with Farmer,” Ransom hissed to Holster. “Lardo will kill us. She has to share a wall with him.”

“Oh no, don’t—” Bitty shook his head, looking pale and horrified at the idea. “That’s… Yes, ...Lardo… would hate that.”

Chowder tugged on Will’s hand and dragged him and Derek out the room, leaving Bitty to ponder the idea that his frogs might have had sex.

“How’s your summer been, Dex? I can’t believe I haven’t talked to you in a bajillion years.”

“We texted this morning,” Will pointed out. “We’ve talked to each other nearly every day.”

“At least Nursey came to San Francisco. Even though that was two decades ago and he wasn’t there for long enough. But you! I haven’t seen you in so long, Dex.” Chowder stopped in front of the door to his room and looked Will up and down. “Look at how much you’ve grown!”

Will frowned. “I haven’t grown at all.”

“And have you done your hair differently?”

“No.”

Chowder peered at him, scrutinizing him as if he were an opposing team member facing Chowder with a puck. “I think your ears are bigger!”

“What?” Will spluttered. “C, what, no they aren’t. Don’t-” He sighed, knowing from Chowder’s grin that the more defensive he got, the faster the chirps would come. “Just show us your room, already.”

Will had only been in Jack’s room once the year before - when they were given a tour of the Haus. He remembered plain walls, just a handful of motivational posters, a rug in muted colors and bedding to match. The red of Samwell pennants and newsletters were the only splashes of brightness in what was, otherwise, a typical but boring student room.

Walking into Chowder’s room was like walking into a completely new place. Dull curtains had been replaced with San Jose Sharks curtains. The bed was made to match, and a San Jose Junior Sharks jersey was in a frame on the wall. They made the walls look brighter and more blue than they had when Jack occupied the room. Teal notebooks and ring binders filled a shelf of their own, with textbooks and novels on the next. DVDs took up the rest of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf.

“I like what you've done with the place,” Nursey said, crouching to look at the hand-painted teal drawers under the bed.

“Thanks!”

Will grinned, settled on the bed, and pulled SJ Sharkie onto his lap. “Hey, C?”

Chowder hummed questioningly.

“I missed you, too.”

“Come visit next time. Please?”

Will swallowed, but he didn't know how to deny those pleading eyes. “I'll try. Really hard. I promise.”

“You should both come to New York for winter break,” Derek piped up. As if he anticipated the argument on the tip of Will's tongue, he added, “You could still get to Maine for a few days.”

“Yeah,” Chowder agreed. “I was looking at our schedule and thinking it's probably not going to be worth me going home. And staying here would only be fun if lots of other people are. I'd rather do whatever you guys are doing.”

Will desperately wanted to agree with them; to enthuse about the idea of a Frogs’ trip to New York City; to simply feel happy about the idea instead of the growing anxiety over what others could see if he stayed at Derek's house for the holidays.

“It's August,” he said, because they were waiting for him to respond. “The semester hasn't even started yet. We don't need to think about Christmas yet.”

Neither of them looked convinced; they both knew him too well to believe he wasn’t already planning his life that far into the future and more. Will pretended that wasn't the case. If none of them said anything about it, maybe the conversation would move on and he could breathe again.

“I try not to think about Christmas at all,” Derek said. "What's Christmas? I was talking about winter break."

It wasn’t even funny, but Will snorted, and that was enough to set Chowder off laughing so hard that he crumpled on the bed, holding his stomach. Derek joined them on the bed as he started to laugh at Chowder. The string of anxiety which had been pulling tight within Will fell loose. It was the same easy friendship it had been before the summer. They were still the same. They loved each other, in more ways than one, and they could find enjoyment in anything when in each other's presence.

“Hey. Hey, C. Open your mouth,” Derek said between gasps of breath, after their laughter had subsided. He put his thumb on Chowder’s chin, and pulled it down.

“What are you-” Will didn't need to finish the question because as soon as he saw Chowder’s teeth, it became apparent what Derek was doing. “You have pink in your braces!”

“No teal,” added Derek.

Chowder picked at one of the bands (a baby blue one) despite it not helping him see. “Trans pride flag. I felt like a change.”

“They look great,” Will told him, and Derek agreed with enthusiasm.

“Thanks! I figured— Okay. Serious faces for a second.” Chowder sat cross-legged on the bed and faced them, his eyebrows pulling together into a serious frown.

Will's concern was reflected in the tension in Derek's jaw.

“What's up, C?”

“I’ve been talking to the coaches a lot over the summer. Coach Hall says that we need to expect a lot of eyes on Samwell, and a lot of journalists trying to get to us for gossip about Jack, and that considering, uh, the developments after the NWHL draft, I might end up under a microscope.”

“But… Nobody knows about you,” Will said, feeling lost. “Not in terms of it being _public.”_

“It’s not exactly private, Dex. And there’s already been people from California tweeting about how they played against me before I transitioned.”

“What?” Derek asked. “Where? Who? I haven’t seen any of that and I’ve been looking for it.”

“They didn’t mention me by name or anything. The only people interested in news like that are the ones who wouldn’t out me over Twitter. But the more comments like that are made, the closer the people who are looking for gossip will be to putting two and two together. It's a miracle nobody's already said something. Everyone’s heard of Samwell, now, with Jack coming here, and they know we’re the top LGBT friendly campus. The day Miguel came out, I saw at least _four_ posts on tumblr saying they bet it was Samwell who agreed to take him.”

“Okay, so…” Derek shifted and pulled a face. “So what does this mean? Are you saying you’re coming out and we need to be ready for the storm, or…?”

“I’m not coming out. I’m not hiding in the first place. We’re still going to avoid saying anything direct about it, and Coach Murray has been working throughout the summer to make sure that no journalist who isn’t a student will set foot on campus. They’re going to talk to the team first practice back about refusing interviews and being careful what we post on social media—”

Derek faked a cough. _“Bitty.”_

“— And showing that we support the trans community, but that we also respect and support trans players staying safe, even if that means not announcing what gender-” For the first time, Chowder faltered and his hands shook. “W-what gender we were assigned at birth.”

Will reached out and wrapped his hand around Chowder’s. He was struggling to understand if Chowder wanted to be out, or not, and he was confused by the statement that he wasn’t hiding anything, followed by talk of remaining silent. He did, however, understand why Chowder would be reluctant to tell the world. In fact, Will struggled more with comprehending why anybody would want to shout it from the rooftops when it only meant torture and trauma and rejection. It wasn’t like Will was ever going to come out. He didn’t see why he would do that, when he was perfectly happy living his life. Nobody judged him, because they didn’t know of any reason to judge him. His little group of people knew — Derek, Chowder, Caitlin, and now Meg and Chloë — and there was no reason why he would tell anybody else. After all, Dan knowing was a disaster. The more people who knew, the more chance for disaster.

“It’s not that I don’t want people to know about me,” Chowder said, jerking Will out of his spiraling thoughts. Will stared at him in confusion. “It’s that they need to realize that it’s not okay to invade other people’s privacy for a bit of news. Miguel has changed his name for a reason, so that they can’t find him. I’m not going to make a public statement just to feed their curiosity about who the first trans man in NCAA hockey was. Fuck that.”

“You’re valid and so is your decision,” Derek said. He planted a sloppy kiss on Chowder’s cheek and got a look of disgust in return.

“That was gay,” Will said, watching them from Chowder’s pillows.

“Jealous, Poindexter?” A flirtatious smile played on Derek's lips, and he pulled Will’s feet into his lap, fingers curling around Will’s ankles. His grip was just tight enough to feel possessive, and that had Will’s toes curling as a thrill shot through his body.

“Uh, guys…” Chowder started, but Will didn’t plan on letting this go any further, Chowder there or not. He shifted his grip on SJ Sharkie, and when Derek looked down to smirk at Will’s feet pressing into his thighs, Will flung the plush shark at him.

Hands still holding Will’s ankles, Derek’s eyes widened just seconds before the shark hit him in the face. “Hey!”

He swatted at Will’s shin, and grabbed SJ Sharkie. He held the shark to Will’s chest, going as if to smother him, but he made sure that he was nowhere near Will’s face. Will pushed back against the weight of both Derek and the shark, but he was soon defeated by laughter when Derek lay on top of him.

“You’re a tease, William.”

“Yeah? Says the guy kissing another man in front of his boyfriend.”

“I can’t believe you two,” Chowder sighed. “Why am I friends with you? Why do I put up with this?”

Derek pulled on Chowder until he lay down next to them, his arm awkwardly between him and Will’s shoulder, but he cuddled in close all the same.

“Missed you, though,” he whispered. “I missed our Frog piles. Is that weird?”

Will tried to shrug, but all he succeeded in doing was jolting Derek. It probably was weird because he knew he loved Derek in a very non-platonic way, and his love for Chowder was definitely platonic so missing them the same amount seemed odd, but it was the case. Then again, Chowder was his best friend, and had been long before Will and Derek were friends.

“It’s not weird,” Derek said. He lifted his head from SJ Sharkie’s back so that he could look at both of them. “You can feel whatever you want. There’s nothing weird about feeling it and I hope you never think it’s weird to tell us. I missed you, too.”

Derek rested his forehead against Will’s temple and, with a hand on his neck, pulled Chowder closer to them. Will smiled. He could fall asleep like this, despite being squashed under Derek and cramped against Chowder in what was admittedly big for a single bed, but not big enough for three six foot plus hockey players.

* * *

They were woken by an announcement of dinner, during which Ransom and Holster ribbed the frogs for falling asleep together but their tones were friendly and light, and everybody knew that the senior defensemen shared a bed on a regular basis so Will forced himself not to think on it too much. After another three games of Mario and a slice of pie each, Will and Derek excused themselves and made their way back to their dorm building. Under the shadow of trees and the darkness of the evening, Will slipped his hand in Derek’s. Derek, to Will’s relief, made no comment about him breaking out of his shell or the risk of being seen. Instead, he gave his hand a gentle squeeze and they walked in blissful silence.

They slept in Will’s room that night, and in Derek’s the next. Will knew that the point of getting separate rooms was so that they could each have their own space and privacy, but as long as they were content to share a space with each other, it seemed silly not to. Besides, neither of them had any work to be doing yet, and so their days were tranquil, with nothing to stress them or push them to overstimulation from being in each other’s presence.

Slowly, the team arrived back on campus. Lardo came first, the morning after Will and Derek, and she brought with her a stack of canvases and art supplies that they were roped into carrying up to her room, while she sat on the kitchen counter chatting to Bitty. Jell-O popped his head in late afternoon to get some pie, touch base with Ransom and Holster about senior stuff, and resolve with Derek to go to the mosque more this year. Wags turned up while Jell-O was still there and announced that Popster wasn’t coming back to Samwell for his senior year. Will wasn’t sure how to feel about that. He hadn’t known Popster well — he wasn’t close to that particular clique within the hockey team — but it was another sign that things this year would be different. The team wouldn’t be the same, and everybody would leave eventually.

When Will and Derek got to the Haus for breakfast the next morning, Ollie and Wicky were in deep discussion with Ransom and Holster about hockey lines, and what the new tadpoles’ prospects might be.

“Tangredi has great stats from high school, but I couldn’t find Whisk’s?” Ollie was saying.

A plate of pancakes appeared in front of Will the moment he sat down. “Thanks, Bits,” he said, but he was more focused on the conversation beside him. “I think Lloyd and Grayson are going to work well together.”

“Sure,” Ransom agreed. “But unless they’re superb, they’re not going to get many games. We already have three strong defence pairs. It’s the forwards we’re more interested in.”

“Coach Murray sent us Whisk’s stats,” Holster told Ollie. “He wasn’t in one of the regular leagues. It doesn’t matter, the point is, the kid’s amazing. I think we’re really lucky to get him. Of course, it helps that the coaches managed to expand the team a little this year. It means we can have those backups and there’s more flexibility if someone needs to miss a game, but it also means a lot of new blood.”

“What league was he in?” Chowder asked. Holster shrugged. Will looked at Chowder, and they shared a look of confusion. There was a curious glint to Chowder’s eye, but Will wasn’t sure what he was thinking.

“Who’s for bacon?” Bitty asked, and they were sufficiently distracted from all hockey talk.

* * *

The next morning was the day the tadpoles finally arrived, and a couple of them were getting there early enough that Ransom and Holster had saved the big table in the middle of the dining hall for a late breakfast. Will took his time getting his eggs and toast while Derek hung about for someone to bring him some more soy milk to add to his oatmeal. Chowder had a bowl of Cheerios in one hand and a plate of waffles and bacon in the other, and yet tried to get himself a glass of juice without getting a tray. Will rolled his eyes as Bitty hurried over to help him out. They weren’t frogs any more. If Chowder wanted to try to carry three things in two hands, he should be left to do it himself.

“Excuse me,” came a voice from behind Will. His eyes still tracked Bitty and Chowder to the table as he stepped aside. When nobody passed him, he glanced over his shoulder.

A boy stood looking at him, nervously. He was wearing a polo shirt and slacks, and his hair was slicked back in a way reminiscent of one of the LAX bros, but Will noted that he was too young to be dressed like that. It looked schoolboyish.

“Hi,” Will said, slowly. Why couldn’t the freshman have picked someone like Derek or Bitty to talk to, instead of Will. “Can I help you?”

The boy’s eyes flickered down to Will’s Samwell Hockey t-shirt, and back up to his face. “I was looking for the team.”

“The-” Will blinked. “The hockey team?”

“Yeah. Um. Connor Whisk.” He held a hand out, and Will’s eyebrows shot into his hairline. Connor Whisk was not the first member of the hockey team to be under 5’10, and Will could hardly judge him for being slender when his own weight had dropped dramatically over the summer until he had barely any waist left at all. He had played on a team with Bitty for a whole year, too, so why he was so surprised that this tiny freshman was introducing himself as the tadpole Holster saw the most potential in, Will didn’t know. He coughed awkwardly, and returned the handshake a beat too slowly.

“Huh. William Poindexter. You can call me Dex.”

Whisk nodded once. Will glanced around the room, hoping one of the team would come to his rescue, but everyone else was sat down now, Derek and Chowder laughing at something Holster was saying, while Ransom spoke to another freshman, who watched the conversation with curiosity.

“The team’s over there,” Will told Whisk. “Are you eating with us?”

Whisk looked over at the team, looking a little queasy, but he nodded.

“I know it’s a lot,” Will carried on, not sure how to stop himself from talking if Whisk wasn’t going to fill in the silences. “Starting at a new school, being away from home. I bet you were hoping I’d say they were at any table than that one, weren’t you?” He gave a nervous chuckle, watching as TiVo and Ozzy shouted down the table to each other, loud enough that the whole dining hall turned to see what the commotion was. Whisk still didn’t respond. He simply helped himself to some granola and a glass of water, and headed over to the team. Will followed, lost and confused.

“You must be Whisk,” Ransom said, when they approached. Whisk nodded. He put his bowl down at the very end of the table, next to the other freshman. “This is Tango,” Ransom introduced. “He’s the other new forward this year. We’re not expecting any of the other tadpoles until later, but in a few days you can all come round to the Haus for a tour. You’re both in the Facebook group, right?”

“I am!” Tango said, as Whisk nodded. “Is that where we talk about team stuff?”

“Mostly it’s just events,” Holster said. “We use group texts and emails for anything important, but for your first week Facebook might be the easiest way to get in touch with the rest of the team, especially your fellow taddies. Whiskey, I’m Holster, and this is Ransom. We’re your captains. We’ll need your phone number.”

Whisk didn’t even blink at the nickname as he held a hand out for Holster’s phone so that he could put his number in. Tango, however, asked, “Whiskey?”

“It’s got to be Whiskey,” Ollie said. “How could it be anything else? Unless you’re from Wisconsin?”

Whiskey shook his head and handed Holster’s phone back.

“Well, then,” Holster said. “That’s settled. Whiskey and Tango. Welcome to the team!”

Tango talked non-stop throughout breakfast, asking questions about how their schedule usually looked, and what it was like going from high school hockey to college hockey, and what everybody’s majors were. He asked Will about computer science, and asked Chowder when he had to declare a major by. He asked Ollie why Ollie’s nickname was just Ollie, and expressed his surprise over comments that Jack’s nickname had just been Jack. Ransom had to try and explain how ‘Ransom’ had come about, but he floundered when the follow-up question was how the team had managed to vote both Ransom and Holster as captains.

Will’s eyes were drawn to Whiskey. He hadn’t said a word since they got to the table, and though he kept his head down and didn’t lift his gaze from his cereal, Will knew that he was taking in all the information Tango was drawing out from the group. It was hard to tell what he thought.

“Are many of the team in relationships?” Tango asked, his eyes tracking the way Ransom and Chowder’s heads turned when the volleyball team came in. Will raised an eyebrow. This kid might be asking a lot of questions, but he was definitely observant.

“Just Chowder and Ozzy. And Wicky and Ollie are married,” Holster said.

“Fuck off,” Ollie muttered. Wicky rolled his eyes.

“You’re married?” Tango’s eyebrows pulled together.

“No,” Ollie groaned. “Don’t listen to him.”

“The only guys with girlfriends are Chowder and Ozzy,” Bitty said. He seemed overly interested in his breakfast, and Will frowned over the way he didn’t look anybody else in the eye when he spoke. “Cait’s on the volleyball team, and Louise is at Boston College.”

Derek shifted in his chair, and Will resisted looking at him. This was the closest they had ever got to directly lying about their relationship, rather than simply hiding it and playing up the chirping.

“Why are you glaring at Chowder?” Tango asked Ransom, who jumped.

“What? No, I’m not.”

Chowder choked on a laugh. “I’m going to go say hi to Cait,” he announced. “Dex?”

“Yeah,” Will agreed. “I’ll come with.”

“But if she's Chowder’s girlfriend, why's Dex going?”

“She's Dex’s cousin,” Bitty explained to Tango as Derek got up to greet Caitlin with them.

“Oh! So Dex introduced them?”

“Sort of,” Bitty said, slowly. “Not the way you're thinking. Dex didn't know she was here. They just sort of ran into each other.”

Derek snorted, no doubt thinking about how literal Will’s running into Cait had been. They were far enough away from the table now that Chowder turned to them with bright eyes and hissed, “Oh my God! I didn’t know where to look. Did you?”

“What?” Derek asked.

“People on the team with relationships. Obviously there’s you two, and then the whole Ransom and March and April and Holster web, and Lardo, and-”

“What about Lardo?” Will asked, bemused. He knew Ransom and March were sort of a thing, and he didn’t really know what April or Holster had to do with that (unless they had started dating now?), but as far as he knew Lardo was single. Chowder’s exasperated expression begged to differ, but he didn’t explain.

“Who else?” Derek asked. Will glanced at him. Was he not curious about Lardo?

“Vizzy,” Chowder replied. “But it’s new so he’s seeing how it goes the first few weeks of being back at Samwell before he says anything.”

Will nodded like he understood, even though he had never spoken a word to Vizzy and hadn't realized Chowder had kept in touch with him over the summer. It must be a goalie thing.

“And if you don’t know about the other couple, it’s not my place to say.”

“What?” Dex asked, but Chowder had given up on their conversation in favor of calling out to Cait, whose face lit up when she saw them approach.

She put her plate on March’s tray and bounced away from the breakfast counter to throw her arms around Chowder’s neck. They clung onto each other like they hadn't seen each other in months, but Will knew for a fact they had both been at Chowder’s house in San Francisco when they were snapchatting him last week.

“How was it?” Chowder asked.

“So good! Only two of the freshmen went which is a shame but it _is_ optional. I only went last year because March told me I had to. We played some really good games. It was nice to be on the beach again. I missed that.”

“I'm sorry.”

“No! Don't… It's not your fault. I'm the one who chose to spend the summer somewhere that _wasn't_ a fifteen minute drive from Santa Monica and a half hour drive from March. And we did play beach ball that once with Nursey. It was just cold.”

“You and I have different definitions of cold,” Derek said.

Cait finally turned to smile at him and Will. “Okay, Mr Ice Hockey. Whatever. Hi.”

Unlike with Chowder, she had to rise onto her toes to hug Derek, and they only wrapped one arm around each other, keeping it brief and bro-like. Cait reached out for Will before she had let go and he took Derek's place with ease.

“How are you?” she muttered into his ear, holding him in a tight squeeze.

Thoughts of his conversation with Dan flashed through his mind. “Uh. We should talk later.”

Cait pulled back to frown at him. Behind her, Chowder wore a similar expression.

“Babe?” Derek said. Even he sounded confused, so Will shot him a glare for the public endearment, but otherwise just shrugged.

“About Dan.”

“Oh,” Derek said, eyes widening a little.

“Nothing… well he's not in trouble or anything,” Will hastened to add because Cait looked worried. “He's just an asshole, but that… we'll talk about it later okay?”

“Okay,” she agreed. “You've got another couple of days before conditioning, haven't you?”

“Thursday,” Chowder said.

Cait raised an eyebrow at Will. “Happy birthday to you. Are you doing anything else?”

“No.”

“I thought we could—” Derek started.

_“No.”_

Will’s hands shook. No, they weren’t going to celebrate it. They couldn’t celebrate it. It wasn’t something good, or something that he wanted to commemorate.

Cait tilted her head to the side. “How about we do something just the four of us?”

“It’s just a normal day,” Will told her, tightly. “One where all of us are going to be focusing on getting in shape for preseason, so there’s no need to do anything.”

“Will…”

Will shook his head and turned away. He shrugged off Chowder’s hand when it fell on his shoulder.

“Dex,” Derek said. His voice was firm, now, but slightly chirpy in the way they normally talked if people who didn't know about them were around. “Bro, what about Saturday night? Dinner at Jerry's. To celebrate the first week back, obviously. Not anything else. Just the four of us.”

Will stared at the table where the rest of the hockey team were laughing and chirping each other. Bitty was talking to Tango and Whiskey, no doubt about pie filling preference and dietary requirements. Ransom and Holster looked very mature and captainly, not even having their usual challenge to see what they could fit in Holster’s mouth. Will knew if he said anything to them about his birthday, a kegster would be planned in his honor before he even finished his sentence. This team, his family, they should be the people he wanted to celebrate with. But Will had no idea how to enjoy a birthday without Jess and nobody there understood that.

An arm came to rest around Will’s shoulder, and he was pulled into an embrace. He let his head be pulled down by fingers scraping through his hair, and found his face pressed into Chowder’s shoulder. Derek moved behind him, and Will knew that he would be blocking the view of them from the rest of the team.

“It’s okay,” Chowder whispered. “It’s okay, we don’t have to do anything if you don’t want. But we love you, okay?”

His tone pulled Will back to Earth. He knew that Chowder wasn’t being patronizing, but there was something about the way he spoke which made Will feel breakable. It was a softness that should have been comforting but instead highlighted all of Will’s vulnerabilities and shone a spotlight on him. His head jerked up and he stepped out of Chowder’s arms. “I’m fine. It’s okay. We’ve missed breakfast.”

Sure enough, most of the hockey team had left, now, including the tadpoles. Ransom and Holster were the only ones left at the table, and had moved down to sit in the seats next to Will, Derek and Chowder’s abandoned trays.

“I’ll see you later,” Cait told them, pulling Chowder in for a quick kiss. Will nodded distractedly, walking back to drop into the seat by Ransom.

“All right?” Ransom raised an eyebrow, and Will knew that he was curious what was going on.

Will shrugged. He dug into his eggs, even though they weren’t very hot any more.

“Can we take a walk in a bit?” Ransom asked, clearly trying to be casual, but the way his eyes flickered to Holster, who was nodding encouragingly, gave him away.

“Uh. Okay?”

“S’up, bros,” Derek said as he sat down opposite Will. It wasn’t much effort for Will to roll his eyes.

“Chowder,” Holster said. “I want to pick your brain about something when you've finished breakfast, if that’s okay?”

Will frowned. His eyes slid from Ransom, to Holster, and finally to Derek who was eating his oatmeal, unaware that he was about to be abandoned. At least, that’s what Will thought until Derek’s phone buzzed.

“Gotta go,” Derek muttered, through a mouthful of oatmeal. “That’s Lardo.”

Now Will was starting to suspect the seniors were up to something, but it wasn’t clear what. It was even less clear when he and Ransom got to Lake Quad, and Ransom turned to him and asked, “So how have you been over the summer? Anxiety-wise.”

“What?”

“Dex. We meant it when we told you we’d have your back about that, but it means more now that we’re your captains. We want you to be able to talk to us. We want to _know_ if shit is going on. We can’t help if we don’t know, you know?”

“Uh, yeah. I guess.”

Ransom looked at him expectantly, and Will realized that he was still waiting for an answer about the summer.

“It was okay.” He chewed on his lip, and figured that Ransom would probably relax a bit if Will gave him something more honest. “Summer’s usually harder,” he admitted. “No hockey to channel my thoughts into. And then, uh. The anniversary of-” The words locked in his throat, but he knew from the way Ransom’s eyes widened that he knew what Will was talking about. (Or at least partially. Ransom knew there had been a car crash — not much else).

“Yeah? That’s rough. But, uh—”

“I’m okay, now,” Will assured him. “I’ll let you know if things get bad.” He hesitated, and asked, “How about you? Have you been okay? And, uh, starting senior year and all…”

Ransom’s eyes went soft. “I’m good. I’m actually feeling really good about my thesis. I might not be saying the same come midterms, but at the moment I’m just looking forward to hockey.”

Will choked out a laugh. “Yeah. I feel that.”

“Is start of a new year hard for you?” Ransom asked. “With new frogs and old seniors gone?”

“Uh.” Will thought about it. It was true that change always made him a bit antsy and the start of a new semester always brought a lot of things he had to adapt to, but at least that was a change he was used to and could prepare for. “It's not so bad. I'm a bit anxious about it? But mostly in what will the frogs’ playing styles be like and will they merge with the rest of the team, and what if the coaches decide to mix up the d-partners and realize that I'm actually a shit player and drop me from the team so that I lose my hockey scholarship and—”

“Woah,” Ransom said, cutting off Will's tirade with a hand on his shoulder. Will breathed heavily. He felt stupid for letting his mouth get away from him like that. Ransom was framing his face with his hands, now, pushing and pulling until Will had no choice but to look him in the eye. “You're a great player, whoever your partner will be. I don't know why they'd put you with anyone but Nursey because you do both play your best together, but even if you're with Teddy, or TiVo, or one of the taddies you'll still be a great player. So none of that, okay?”

Will wanted to shake his head, but Ransom was still holding it in place so he forced himself to swallow and accept the words. “I might not get partnered with you?” he asked.

Ransom let out a barking laugh and dropped his hands away from Will’s face. “Now you're pushing it. Come on. Pie time.”

They circled back around the Pond so they were on the path leading to the Haus. A duck quacked at them from the middle of the path. They stepped away from each other to go around it, and as they carried on, that gap between them remained. Will shoved his hands deep in his pockets and tried to focus on where he was putting his feet, instead of letting the silence draw his thoughts into dangerous territory.

“Dex?”

They were passing Gregory and Will looked at the building in fondness as he hummed in response. Grand university buildings in polished stone weren't to be found in the tiny Maine fishing village the Buchards lived in, but on seeing them, Will felt an ache. It was like coming home.

Ransom still hadn't said anything, so Will asked, “Yeah?”

“Thank you. For talking to me.”

He could throw up his defenses in response, and he certainly felt a little tense thinking about how maybe this meant Ransom would expect him to talk to him about that sort of stuff in the future. After all, anxiety was one of the first things they had found themselves to have in common besides hockey. One of the only things, actually, but Will didn’t want to think about who his friends would be if he didn't have the team. Having the team was so special, so important, that Will was able to relax; he was able to brush away those defenses and nod.

“Is this— Like, you're talking to me and Holster’s talking to Chowder, and Lardo’s talking to Nursey. That’s deliberate, isn't it? You've paired us off to make sure we're talking to you.”

Ransom hesitated. “Something like that. We just want you to know we've got your back, Dex.”

Will nodded. “I know that,” he said, surprising himself how much he believed the words. “We've got yours, too.”

Ransom sidestepped towards him, and rubbed his knuckles through Will’s hair. “Thanks, bro.”

* * *

It was Will's room that Chowder and Cait came to after the volleyball team’s afternoon practice, so that they were away from the interruptions and distractions and potential lack of privacy in the Haus. They sat on the bed with Will and Derek to hear about his coming out to Dan, and Derek's visit to Maine. In turn, Will heard about Cait’s summer in San Francisco, and her trip to Vancouver and everything else in between. Will blew up a double airbed for them to spread out and they fell asleep uncomfortable, but unbothered by stray limbs, with Netflix autoplaying _Parks and Recreation_ in the background.

Will woke to Cait shuffling around the room, trying to gather her things. She turned back to the bed to kiss Chowder on the forehead and saw Will watching her.

“I have to go to practice.” From the huskiness in her voice, Will guessed she was trying to whisper, but with the external part of her cochlear implants in the pouch in her hand, she had no idea how loud she was actually being. “Tell him I'll text him later.”

Will nodded and gave half a wave as he shifted to a more comfortable position on the airbed and rested his head against Derek’s shoulder. He was asleep again before Cait had closed the door behind her.


	3. Happy Birthday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will turns 19.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings include OCD, grief, some overstepping of boundaries (but not in a way which leaves anybody hurt, it's... sort of talked about and it's all okay in the end)

The day before conditioning began, Ransom and Holster asked for help with the Haus taddy tour. Will and Derek jumped at the chance, though both insisted they were going to be there anyway to hang out with Chowder and it had nothing to do with Dibs. Their first job was to make sure everybody's rooms were presentable and then they retreated to the kitchen to make sure nobody touched the pie cooling on the side while Bitty was with the tadpoles. Derek demonstrated the sound system in the kegster room and followed them upstairs for the tour of the second floor, while Will went to check the washer on Bitty's request. It had been working for Ransom’s most recent load, but not very well the one before that, and Bitty said he wouldn't put it past these boys to have broken it.

It didn't look too bad so it would be hard to tell if anything was wrong with it without running a load or pulling it out to examine the wiring. Even then, Will might not know for certain so he couldn't do much more than frown at the machine until he heard the sounds of Derek ushering the freshmen down to the basement.

“What happens if someone doesn't know who to give their dibs to?” Tango was asking.

“Oh, uh. They put the room up for lottery and anyone in the team could get it. I don't know when that last happened, though.”

“So how do you know that happens? Why not a team vote? Or a vote by the people who are definitely going to live in the Haus?”

“That's what's in the bylaws.” Will could practically hear the shrug in Derek's voice.

“Bylaws? Like rules? Do we have to, like, memorize them?”

The tadpoles were at the bottom of the stairs by this point, so Will couldn't ignore them in favor of the washer any longer. “Uh, not really,” he told them, glancing over their heads at Derek, who held up his hands as if to say  _they're all yours, now._ “But someone scrawled a few of them behind the water heater a bajillion years ago.” Will pointed his thumb at the spot and glanced at the bylaws. The tadpoles would know what all of them were soon enough, but he didn’t particularly want them to stand there reading about how they would be expected to get shitfaced if they scored, or the rule that said nothing but ‘FUCK THE LAX TEAM’. He stood up straight and pulled his shoulders back to give himself an air of authority. “And that's the tour. Now you have to go back to the kitchen.”

Dutifully, the tadpoles climbed back up the stairs. Will noted that Derek had already disappeared, no doubt eager to be first in line for a piece of pie. Before he went up the stairs, Will pressed a hand to the water heater to feel if it was rumbling more than before the summer. He thought it might be, but there was still no leaking around it and the signs of damp on the wall didn’t look worse than the year before so he decided to keep an eye on it, but not worry about it giving out just yet.

Upstairs, Will grabbed a piece of the cherry pie, because Bitty had made that one with butter so he wanted to leave the margarine-made apple pie for Derek. He leant against a counter, because the table was full with the tadpoles and Derek, and he frowned at Bitty's back, because he was washing up dishes with a bit more vigor than usual, and hadn't even asked Will how the dryer was.

“Oh the cherry is so good!” Tango said through a mouthful of pie. “Have you tried it, Nursey?”

Derek, engrossed in his own slice of pie, didn't notice he was being talked to, but he must have felt Tango’s eyes on him because he jumped. He looked at the tadpole, unblinkingly, and paused his chewing for a second in a way which made him look guilty.

Will rolled his eyes. “Tango asked if you'd had some of the cherry pie,” he supplied. “The cherry one has butter in the crust. Nursey can't eat butter.”

Tango frowned. “Oh. Why not?”

“I'd die,” Derek told him in a flat voice.

“Don't be so dramatic,” Bitty said as Tango’s expression turned from confusion to horror. “He’d have an allergic reaction but it's not going to happen and even if it does, we can call 911 and it would all be okay. You two can get out my kitchen now; stop causing trouble and let our captains have the space to talk to our tadpoles.”

Will looked around in bemusement to see who the second person Bitty was talking to was. His brows pulled together and his lips parted when he didn't find anyone else it could be. “Wait. Me? What have I done? Why am I lumped in as a troublemaker because  _Nurse_ is being dramatic?”

Bitty sighed. “And there you go. Go on.”

Will found himself pushed from the kitchen with Derek.

“What the fuck?!” he complained as the door shut behind them.

Derek was already at the bottom of the porch. “You're doing a good job of making sure they believe you still hate me.”

Will stared at his back. “I don't— I never— They don't think that.”

Derek turned and looked at him incredulously. “Yes, Will, they do.”

“I don't.”

“I know,” Derek replied softly. “Come on, I want to go to Founders.”

“You always take forever looking at books.”

“And because you don't hate me, in fact you  _love_ me, you're going to come with me and wait while I look at them.”

Will sighed, because he knew Derek was right. He knocked against the frame of the porch . “Okay, let’s go.”

* * *

“What class is this for?” he asked, half an hour later, as Derek pulled off another foreign poetry book to flick through. When they ended up in this section, Will had expected Derek to go for the section of Arabic poetry books. He didn’t, however, and while Derek was a bit of a nerd when it came to languages, Will didn’t think even he would try to learn a new language from reading poems. The symbolism would be too hard to translate directly.

“I want to do this foreign poetry seminar this semester,” Derek said, ‘reading’ the back of one of the books.

“Do you… Get to see the translations?”

Derek snorted. “Ch’yeah. How do you think they’d do it otherwise?”

“I don’t know!” Will replied, throwing his hands up in the air. “You’re the one pretending to be able to read Italian.”

“It’s  _poetry,_ William. You can still feel the rhythm and some of the imagery when it’s in a language you don’t speak.”

“But you’ll be reading the translation.”

 _“Next_ to the original.”

Will didn’t understand, and probably Derek considered him a lost cause because he didn’t say anything else while he made a final decision of which poetry books he was going to take out, and returned the others to their shelves.

As they neared the exit of the library, Will's heart was in his throat. Anybody could see them together and question why a Computer Science and Electrical Engineering major was hanging about the Arts library, following an English major around on his quest to find library books — to find  _poetry_ books, which no doubt contained sonnets and love songs. He slowed his steps enough that the gap between them got bigger and it was less obvious that they were walking together. At the door out of Founders, he paused to zip up his jacket and to check that nobody was around who might question why the two of them were there, alone, together. He watched as Derek hopped down the steps of the library ahead of him, books tucked under his arm, and spat some excess saliva on the sidewalk.

Will’s eyes tracked the spit; it fell in slow motion, and his heartbeat picked up as it settled on the ground as a tiny pool of white bubbles.

The itch was overwhelming.

It was wrong, wrong,  _wrong._

Those little bubbles spread and grew, contaminating the ground. Will imagined pressure washing the sidewalk, but his breath hitched because that didn’t feel  _enough_ to right this. It was a bacteria, multiplying out of control.

He scratched at his hand five times, then twisted his hands over each other so that he could even the scratches out. The itch didn’t disappear. The only way he could deal with it was by getting rid of the offending dribble. He gave five taps against the railing of the library steps, and that made him feel a little better, made it easier to resist the build up of anxiety. He bent down to tap the actual steps as well.

“Will?”

Will shook his head, and flinched away from the sudden pressure on his hand.

"Will, please," Derek said, and this time Will closed his fingers around Derek's and let him lead him down the steps, far away from Founders. Will reached out to tap the surfaces they passed along the way.

“You’re okay. It’s okay. Everything’s okay. We’re just going to go back to the dorms. You’re okay.”

The words were like a mantra, repeated in Derek’s familiar and comforting tone, and Will followed them all the way back to his dorm.

“Here. You’re okay,” Derek said as he sat Will on his bed and pressed a bottle of water into his hands. Will tapped his knuckles against the frame of the bed, and turned the bottle around in his hands twice, then back the other way, making sure the label was square to his body before he took a sip.

“Okay,” Derek repeated. “Do you know what triggered that?”

“I can’t ask you not to do it, can I?” Will asked, his fingers vibrating against the water bottle. It was easier to talk about this than it was to avoid being out in public with his boyfriend, stroke teammate, stroke best friend.

“Ask me not to do what?” Derek looked so genuinely confused, that Will wondered if he had imagined the whole thing. He dropped his eyes to the floor.

“I- Uh. Spitting?”

Derek frowned. “You can ask. But why?”

“No reason. It’s just something I have to get past.”

“Will…”

“It’s just— It’s gross. My mom always told me it was a dirty habit and you shouldn’t do it. But it’s my problem.”

Derek squatted in front of him, so that he was in Will’s eyeline. “Boundaries are good. You’re allowed to ask for things that will make it easier for you. I don’t want to feel like I’m changing for you, and the thought of  _swallowing_ it grosses me out.” He sniggered to himself but, with a shake of his head, his eyes turned serious again. “I'll do what I can to make things easier for you. I can not do it in front of you. Or, uh, you know, after wearing a gum shield, I normally—”

“You could— I mean. If you keep it to one spot in the locker room. I can— I can separate that, I think.” He frowned as he thought about it. “Like… that's a situation and place where it's okay. It's within the boundaries. Not close enough to me to bother me.”

“Okay. I mean… I don't know. I guess I've never considered it to be a dirty habit before but if— There's things we have done to change for each other. Being better people. Not saying things we shouldn’t and stuff like that.”

“Derek, please. If you promise to stop for me, then next time you forget for a second and do it anyway, it'll be worse. Don't promise me anything, please.”

“Baby…” Derek sounded pained, but he trailed off with a shake of his head and pressed his forehead to Will's. “It’s just spitting.”

Will sighed. “Which is why I need to get over it.”

Derek looked like he wanted to argue, so Will distracted him with a deep kiss and tugged Derek up, rolling so that they were snuggled on the bed.

* * *

Will woke to Derek's smile. His hair was squashed on the side he had slept on, and his stubble bordered on scruff, but his eyelashes were coated in clear mascara and there was a shot of red around the green of his eyes from waking up too early. Will lifted a finger to perfect skin, testing if Derek was real.

“Good morning.”

Derek caught Will's hand in his own. “Morning. Happy birthday.”

“It must be,” Will agreed. He breathed in Derek's scent, and entwined their legs, comforted by the warmth and softness of Derek's skin.

“Huh?” Even in incredulous confusion, Derek was beautiful.

“I'm the luckiest person on Earth,” Will said. He rested their joined hands against Derek's cheek and traced flawless features with his eyes.

“How's that?” Derek asked.

“Nobody else gets to wake up next to you.”

Derek grinned and put his free hand on Will's forehead. “Are you feeling okay?”

“I'm great.”

“Are you an imposter? Tell me something only Will Poindexter would know.”

Will rolled his eyes. “Shut up,” he said, laughing.  “I’m serious. You're so beautiful. I don't deserve you. What did I do to get to wake up like this?”

“Sap." Derek leaned in for a kiss, and then another, and then another.

Their noses brushed against each other. Will sighed, and was fascinated with the way Derek’s bottom lip shuddered. “I should tell you more. I love you, and you’re amazing, and I appreciate having you so much and I should be telling you that every day.”

“Will.” Derek wore a bemused smile now. He shook his head slightly.

Will opened his mouth to respond, but all that left him was a hiccup. His eyes watered against his will and before he knew it, Derek was pulling Will against his chest.

“Okay, baby. It’s okay. I love you, too.”

Will wound his arms around Derek and let himself sob into his shoulder. “I don’t— I don’t even know why I’m crying.”

“That’s okay. You don’t have to know,” Derek told him, but he sounded lost and confused so Will forced himself to think. He replayed the few minutes that had passed since waking up, pausing and rewinding and replaying in his mind, until he was able to kiss Derek’s shoulder, where his shirt gaped open, and pull away to look at him.

“I guess I just— It’s not fair. That I get this.  _You._ I get to wake up with you and be happy and nineteen, when she—” He coughed and made himself rephrase. The various counsellors he had seen last semester had all said that it was better for him to be specific. “When Jess doesn’t.”

Derek slid his fingers under the hem of Will's top and rubbed his thumb in comforting circles over his hip. “No. It’s not fair. But it’s not fair that she doesn’t get it. It  _is_ fair that you do. You deserve to be happy, Will. You’re allowed to be happy. You’re allowed—” He swallowed, and his eyebrows arched in apprehension that his words would be ill-received. “You’re allowed to enjoy your birthdays.”

Will kissed Derek’s shoulder again. “You’re too good to me,” he muttered. Derek started to shake his head, but Will put his hand against his neck and kissed along his collarbone. “I know,” he said into Derek’s skin. “I know Jess would want me to be happy. She’d hate for me to be miserable, and to ignore our birthday. But I feel terrible, Derek. I feel like a terrible person for even  _considering_ celebrating right now. It feels tacky. Like… Like the way foster parents forced me to be happy and eat cake and expected me to be grateful when they sang Happy Birthday, even though they were singing  _‘dear William’_ or  _‘dear Billy’_ or anything but  _‘dear Jess-and-Will’.”_ When he snorted, another hiccup caught in his throat and tears spilled down his cheeks.“Like we’re one person because it’s always weird trying to fit two people’s names into the song.”

“Okay,” Derek said, brushing away a tear with his thumb. “No Happy Birthday song. And no cake, either. Who wants cake when you can have key lime pie?”

“Bitty never makes key lime pie.”

Derek smiled as if he had a secret. Will supposed he would have to look surprised later when it turned out Derek had bribed Bitty to make a key lime pie for today. He just hoped Derek hadn’t told Bitty  _why_ Will needed his favorite pie today, even though Bitty’s recipe included a gelatin that wasn’t kosher by Holster’s standards, and he had been so focused on perfecting vegan pie crusts for pies he preferred to make that he hadn’t spent time working out a dairy-free key lime pie so as not to exclude Derek. The only time he had made Will a key lime pie was on one roadie when he made everybody their favorite pie in miniature. He had declared it so much effort, especially trying to keep Derek’s contamination-free, that he would never do it again. It would be a huge amount of trouble for Bitty to have to make a key lime pie today, and he would certainly want to know why Derek wanted him to go through the pains of it.

"Hey,” Derek said, softly. "It's okay. I don't know what your thoughts are telling you, but I love you and I want you to be happy. "

Will breathed into Derek's neck. How was it that he was so invested in Will's happiness? "I know."

"Okay. When can I give you your presents?"

Will glanced at the clock and winced. “After conditioning,” he said. Derek nodded, as if he expected that answer.

“Okay, but you have to take part one now.”

Will frowned, and opened his mouth to argue, but Derek had already sat up and reached over to the desk.

Will stared at the takeaway cup. “You went to Dunkin’s?”

“My reputation is now tarnished. I’m going to feel guilty every time I pass Annie’s so you better take the coffee.”

Will took the cup from him and continued to stare at it. “When did you do this?”

“You were still asleep. It should be cold enough for you to drink, now.”

Will took a sip and smiled. The coffee was perfect — not that he was the one with a complicated order, but he didn’t like to drink it hot, and Derek must have accounted for the required cooling down period when he set his alarm. “Is this why you look like you didn’t sleep? I didn’t want you to lose sleep for me.”

“I had a couple of things to sort out.”

“Derek.” Will frowned. He wanted to admonish his boyfriend for waking up early just to pamper him, but he didn’t want Derek to think he didn’t appreciate the gesture. “Thank you. You’re amazing and sweet and I love you. And thank you for the coffee. I’d rather have it without you being all red-eyed and exhausted.”

“It’s fine. I wanted to do it.”

Will bit on his lip. “Okay,” he said, weakly. “Thank you. I— We can come to bed early tonight?”

“That was the plan.” Derek grinned and waggled his eyebrows.

“That’s—” Will choked. “Jesus. I need to shower.”

* * *

When they arrived at the gym and Chowder wasn’t amongst the group of Haus residents and upperclassmen chirping each other outside, Will’s stomach dropped. He thought Chowder would be there with a grin and a hug and a need to wish him a happy birthday even if Will didn’t really want to hear it. Instead, he got a shrug from Bitty and a vague explanation that Chowder had already left the Haus before everyone else was ready. Ransom and Holster ushered them inside before Will could investigate further.

He was there, in a deep but quiet conversation with the coaches. All three wore serious expressions, until Coach Murray, glancing over his shoulder, said something which made Chowder laugh and nod. Chowder walked away from the coaches, but he didn’t approach Will. Rather, he sat on a couch, next to an anxious looking Whiskey, and offered him a fist bump. Whiskey accepted cautiously.

“Okay!” Ransom called out to the team as a whole. “We want to pair everyone up. Frogs, with tadpoles. Chowder and Whiskey. Nursey and Tango. Dex and Kilo. Vizzy, you’re a sophomore for today, and you’re with X-Gray.”

Will wasn’t the only one to roll his eyes at the nickname ‘X-Gray’. Sometimes Holster could be a genius with the names, and sometimes he wasn’t as funny as he thought he was. His attempt to give all the tadpoles nicknames from the NATO phonetic alphabet, had become a little ridiculous when applied to Grayson.

As the upperclassmen milled around trying to pair up, Will walked up to a blond freshman, who stared around him as if the mere thought of being in a university gym was overwhelming.

“Hi. Lloyd, right? I’m Dex.”

“Uh, yeah. Keegan. I mean, Lloyd. Keegan Lloyd. Except they’re calling me Kilo?”

Will nodded. “My actual name’s Will Poindexter. If you like to know those sorts of things. Did your old hockey team do nicknames?”

Kilo shrugged. “Not in a big way? We mostly just went by our surnames.”

“Mine didn’t much, either,” Will admitted. “I moved a lot so maybe if I’d settled somewhere I would have got a nickname, because some of the other guys did, but it wasn’t like here where everyone has one and we  _always_ use the nicknames. You’ll get used to it.”

Kilo’s shoulders relaxed and they went over to the dumbells. “I guess. Squats?”

Will lifted one of the dumbells with a nod, as Tango’s voice drifted over to them asking Derek about the difference between the Frogs and the freshmen. At least Kilo seemed to be happy to exercise in silence.

* * *

Chowder pounced on Will when they got back to the locker room, and a lot of the team (including Ransom, Holster and Bitty) were already in the showers.

“Happy birthday!”

Will checked the room even though Chowder kept his voice down enough that only Derek could hear. “Thanks.”

“Are you having a good day?”

Will couldn't help glancing at Derek, and he knew all his features softened in fondness. “I am.”

“Aww,” Chowder cooed with a grin. “You two are gross.”

Will's face heated up. “We didn't—” He started, but Chowder’s grin only grew and he realized the trap he had fallen into.

“I suggested no such thing. Although if you want my opinion—”

“We don't.”

“—a bit of morning birthday sex never hurt anyone.”

Will looked around the room in horror. Nobody was paying their conversation any attention, but his mind raced with the what ifs of somebody overhearing.

“We're saving it for tonight,” Nursey said. Will hit him in the stomach.

“Boys!” Bitty shouted from the way out of the showers. “No fighting!”

Will had to force himself not to look at Derek, because if he did then he would laugh.

“Yes, Bitty,” they replied in unison.

“Before you all go,” Holster called out.

The room went silent, except for Bitty, who said, “the Frogs haven't showered yet.”

Holster waved off his concerns. “They're a lost cause." Will rolled his eyes. “Before you all go,” he repeated, “We have to talk to you about social media.”

“Hey,” Chowder whispered, as Holster and Ransom rehashed what he had told Will and Derek on their first day back at Samwell. “I have your present in my room. Team breakfast is at the Haus so can I give it to you then?”

Will shrugged. He wasn’t so sure that he wanted presents, but he couldn’t say no to the look Chowder was giving him. “Okay.”

“After breakfast, then,” Chowder said. “And then we should go see a movie or something.”

“Nah, we’re going to Boston.”

Will tilted his head to Derek. “We are?”

“Hey, you two,” Ransom interrupted. “Stop holding Chowder up and go shower. We want breakfast.”

“He started talking to us, not the other way around,” Will muttered, but he pushed himself to his feet and followed Derek to the showers.

* * *

They were late to breakfast. Derek had splashed Will in the showers and that had led to a water fight and when Chowder came to investigate the noise, they turned on him. He had shooed them back to the locker room to sit and wait and giggle to each other while they waited for him to have his shower, and by this point the rest of the team were long gone.

“Hey, bro,” Lardo said when the three of them walked upto the Haus. She sat on the rail of the porch, smoking a joint (the most likely reason for her being outside, as Bitty wouldn’t allow smoking in his kitchen). “Happy birthday.”

Will stopped halfway up the steps. “What?”

“Nope. Not that high. It’s definitely your birthday.” She narrowed her eyes at him, as if he was deliberately trying to confuse her.

“But… How did you know?”

“Bro. Dex. William. My dude. You know that the whole team’s birthdays are on the roster? Which is on the Samwell website? So anybody with Internet access can see them? And as team manager I look at that roster enough to have it etched on the back of my eyelids.”

“But-” Will had to admit he was stumped, even though realistically he knew what she said was perfectly logical. However much people looked at the roster, Will knew that they didn’t  _remember_ people’s birthdays. Most of them barely noticed them.

Lardo handed her joint out to him, and he shook his head distractedly. Chowder took it instead, and she jumped off the rail. “Breakfast,” she said pointedly and headed inside.

“Finally,” Bitty sighed when they walked in. “Now where’s that goalie?”

“Having a stress relief,” Lardo replied.

“What? Having a—  _Larissa Duan. You did not!_ We are in  _pre-season.”_

“He’s old enough to make his own decisions, brah.”

“And it isn’t his first,” Derek added under his breath.

Will’s eyes roamed over the counters behind Bitty. “Are those—”

“Croissants! They were Nursey’s idea. For a first day of conditioning thing or something. Strange, too, because he insisted on me making them with butter even though he can’t eat them.”

“They’re homemade?” Will asked, sinking into a seat.

“They are!”

Will looked across at Derek, who looked much too pleased with himself. He wanted to kiss him for doing  _this_ for him. He wanted to hug him and hold him and never let go of him. A part of him wanted to chastise him for making him feel these feelings, and especially for making him feel them in front of people who didn’t, and couldn’t, know anything. All he could do, was shake his head in amazement and exasperation, and mouth, “thank-you,” when the rest of the room was distracted by Ransom asking Bitty what he was tweeting.

“Nothing! I swear. I’m texting.”

“Who?”

Bitty’s jaw tensed. “If you must know, it’s Jack.”

“Oh. Well that’s okay, I guess.”

Bitty muttered something under his breath, and turned back to the croissants. “So who wants one of these while I get some eggs and toast on?”

“I’ll do the toast,” Derek offered.

“No you won’t.”

Derek’s mouth twisted into a pout. “But Bits. I’m not eating croissants or eggs. Can I at least do my own toast?”

“You’re not touching this toaster, Mister. Don’t think I’ve forgotten you setting off the smoke alarm last year.”

“At least we know it works?”

Will pulled his croissant apart with his fingers and popped a bitesize piece into his mouth. It was flaky and buttery and delicious, and though Will could barely remember how his mom’s used to taste, he was sure this must be giving them a run for their money. His eyes felt wet, and he hoped he was just imagining it, or it felt worse than it looked because of his emotional day.

“Dex, honey, are you okay?”

_Oh no._

Bitty’s words were enough to make the tears spill over. He nodded, and when he chewed on another piece of croissant he wanted to moan with how good it was, but Bitty didn’t look convinced, and Derek looked worried. Ransom and Holster stared at him, with identical blank expressions and croissants halfway to their mouths.

“Why are you—”

“Not now, Tango,” Ollie muttered.

Chowder dropped into the seat next to Will and flung an arm over his shoulders as he stole a piece of the pastry. “Is it good?” he asked, throwing it in his mouth before Will could answer. He tugged on Will’s shoulder until he twisted into the hug and hid his face from the rest of the team Chowder’s hoodie. He smelled like weed, but Will decided he wouldn’t care about that. It was okay for Chowder. Totally legal. (Or, not exactly in Massachusetts but it was okay, Will didn’t have to worry about that, and hockey hadn’t started yet so unless the ECAC decided to do preseason drug testing… No. They wouldn't. Nothing bad would happen. It wouldn’t. It  _wouldn’t,_ and he would keep telling himself that until his brain stopped trying to tell him otherwise).

Chowder answered his own question with his mouth full. “It’s really good. Thanks, Bits.”

“You’re welcome,” Bitty said, slowly. He was probably eyeing them up uncertainly but Will didn’t look up to check.

“Is it better than your mom’s?” Chowder’s chin nudged Will’s head.

He clenched his fist around Chowder’s hoodie. “I can’t remember,” he mumbled. Hopefully nobody else could hear the crack in his voice.

“Oh.” Chowder squeezed his arms tighter around Will. “Do you want to go upstairs?”

“Bitty,” Holster said, suddenly. “Phone away.”

“I just- Come  _on!”_  Bitty said in frustration, but when Will squinted at him over Chowder’s shoulder, his phone was nowhere to be seen. “Dex, will you talk to us at least?”

Will wiped his eyes as inconspicuously as he could with the whole room looking at him, and sat up. “Bits… Why did you make croissants today?”

“I told you, Nursey put the idea in my head. I don’t know why, but—” Bitty looked around, lost. When his eyes fell on Derek, they narrowed. “Don’t tell me this was some horrible idea of a prank, Derek Nurse, because I won’t—”

“No, Bits—” Derek started.

“He was trying to be nice,” Will cut in. “And he fucking succeeded, but— Fuck.” His eyes watered again, but he blinked against the tears and stared up at the ceiling, trying to will them away.

“Are we… good?” Derek asked cautiously.

It hurt so much. After everything Derek had done for him so far that day, Will hated to not show him the proper appreciation. He hated that Derek didn’t know just how well he had done, that he  _hadn’t_ messed up, and that Will wasn’t upset with him. He wanted to kiss him all over, and thank him over and over and worship his whole being. The team were all there, though. They stared at him, waiting.

Will ran.

He escaped to Chowder’s room, letting the fog in his ears blur out the sounds of everyone shouting after him, of the clamor of the team, of Bitty telling Derek to stay where he was. He sank to the floor by Chowder’s bed and registered footsteps on the stairs, but he could tell from the sound that it was Chowder.

“Hey.”

Will ran a finger along the crack between two floorboards. The next board along was a different length. “Hi.”

“Are you okay?”

“Who the fuck built the Haus? Why couldn’t they get floorboards that are all the same size? Or at least cut them to length?”

“Dex,” Chowder said. He closed the door behind him and came to sit next to Will. “Are you okay?”

Will bit on the inside of his cheek, and lifted his eyes from the floor. “It’s not Nursey’s fault. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I know.”

“I don’t think he knows that.”

Chowder covered his hand and gave it a pat. “So we’ll tell him. It’s okay. But about the team…”

Will pulled his hand back and curled his knees up to his chest. “They think—”

“You don’t know what they think,” Chowder reminded him. “And you can control part of what they will think.”

Will dug his nails into his shins. “How do you mean?”

“They’re going to wonder why Nursey would do that for you, when you two have never really got on in their eyes. They’re going to think it’s a bit weird for him to randomly do something like that to  _try and be nice_ to you, especially when it’s such a selfless act, because he couldn’t eat the croissants. They maybe think the two of you had a fight and he’s trying to apologize, but they’ll probably ask questions about that. They’ll try and figure out what happened and they’ll get involved. Especially Ransom and Holster to help team dynamics, and Bitty because that’s what Bitty does.”

Will sighed into his knees. Basically, he was screwed. “So we have to lie.”

“Or you could tell them the truth.”

Will jerked violently, and his eyes darted to Chowder. He never thought that Chowder, of all people, would suggest that, but then again Chowder was now out to the entire team, including tadpoles, and in deep discussions with the coaches on how to handle it if there was a backlash when others found out. Chowder kept his eyes on Will, and placed a calming hand on his knee. It almost reassured him.

“Part of the truth,” Chowder corrected himself, giving Will’s knee a squeeze. “If they knew it was your birthday, that would explain it, right? Like… Like we all made a huge fuss of Bitty’s birthday last year and got him Betsy 2.0, and croissants aren’t as big as an oven. Nobody thinks Bitty and Jack are dating, just because Jack sorted that out for him. It’s really not that strange for your d-man to want to make sure you have a good day.”

The idea of explaining what the day was, and trying to calm them when they tried to make a fuss of it, made Will feel queasy. “I— C. I  _can’t_.”

“You can’t or you don’t want to?” 

“Can't.” 

“Can I?”

Will blinked. “What?”

“Remember last year, when you asked me to tell Cait about you and Nursey for you? I could tell the team this and tell them not to throw you a kegster. You don’t even have to be there if you’re worried about seeing their reactions.”

Will reached out and wrapped his hand around Chowder’s. Maybe it was for the best. “Would you?”

Chowder squeezed back. “Only if you want me to.”

“I… yeah. I think… yeah.”

“Now?”

“It's as good a time as any,” Will agreed, though his breath shook.

“I'll be right back. Here. Pass the time opening this.”

A soft package wrapped in red paper fell in Will's lap. He opened the card taped to the paper first. It had a picture of a pie and the words ‘Hap-pie birthday!’, and inside, Chowder had written:

_HAPPY BIRTHDAY BILLY P-DEX! (tea-dex? pee-rex?)_

_HAVE A SWAWESOME DAY!!!_

_From your best friend, C._

The present was a navy t-shirt with a picture of a lobster wearing sunglasses, and a pair of socks with dinosaurs holding mugs and the words ‘tea-rex’. Grinning, Will folded them back into the paper with care.

* * *

By the time Chowder pulled Will back down the stairs, the team were eating breakfast and trying to pretend nothing had happened. They didn’t acknowledge him, or his birthday, and the only hint that Chowder had, indeed, told them was Bitty pouring over a calendar and the team roster, so he could write down everybody's birthdays.

“Now you can put a plus sign if you're in favor of a birthday kegster being organised for you and a minus if you don't want it made into a deal and leave it if you're not fussed either way. Or let someone know what you'd like,” he said, flicking through the calendar to December.

Ransom looked over his shoulder. “Bits, you've got that wrong. Whiskey’s going to be nineteen isn't he?”

“No?”

Ransom blinked at the roster, then at Whiskey. “Bro, this says you were born in 1997.”

“I was.”

“December ‘97.”

“Yes.”

“But… That only makes you… Holy shit I'm so old.” Ransom sank back into his chair and Holster patted him on the shoulder.

“Now you know how I feel.”

“This literal child is only seventeen. How does that even work?”

“Uh,” Will cleared his throat to get their attention. “I'm going back to my dorm.”

“Will you be back before you go?” Bitty asked.

“Go?” Will repeated.

“Chowder and Nursey said you were going to Boston.”

“Oh. Yeah. I guess we are.”

“We don't have to—” Nursey started but there was a quietness and vulnerability in his voice that urged Will to nod in determination.

“We're going. We… actually we better go soon to make sure we can get back.”

“There's packed lunches for you in the fridge,” Bitty told them. “Including a bit of a treat.”

The corner of Will's mouth twitched up at the thought of key lime pie. The fact that Derek jumped up saying that he would get them and then made sure to keep them hidden from Will was enough to convince him he was right.

The three frogs left the Haus, a bag holding Will's gifts from Chowder and their lunch under Derek’s arm, and the conversation about Whiskey's age resuming behind them. Chowder pulled out his phone, to text Cait and ask her to meet them where Derek’s car was parked. Will walked between the two of them, his eyes pinned to the ground.

“I’m sorry,” Derek said.

Will shook his head. He didn’t want to hear an apology. “No.”

“I am.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong. You’ve been amazing today. You’ve done  _so much_ for me. I can’t even—”

“It was too much. You asked me not to make a fuss and I did anyway and now—”

“It’s okay. It was sweet. I— I appreciate it.”

Derek fell silent again as they turned into the sophomore dorm parking lot. They reached his car, but he still hadn't taken his keys out his pocket to unlock it. He frowned at his reflection in the rear window and tapped his fingers on the roof, then turned to Will abruptly.

“Do you even want to go to Boston?”

“I said—”

Derek shot him a look. “You say a lot of things, Will. I won’t be offended if you don’t want to go.”

He said that, but Will was sure it would hurt his feelings all the same. He had spent time and effort planning whatever he was planning in Boston, and he had even asked Bitty to make them up a picnic, so Will wanted to see it through. “It could be fun.”

Derek chewed on his lips and stared at his reflection in the windshield. Will felt a sudden longing for his bed, and Derek wasn't convinced by him anyway. If he couldn't be honest with Derek, then he couldn't be honest with anybody.

“But… I think hanging out in one of our rooms and watching Netflix and eating pie sounds more fun. Right now, at least.”

Derek let out a huff of air and pushed off the car to wrap Will into a hug. “See? That wasn't so hard, was it?”

“I'm sorry. You planned this and I— We should just go. I'm being—”

“Stop it. I didn't plan anything. I just had a look through Boston’s events online and found a couple of things we could just turn up to. No money has been spent except filling my car up with gas and buying food for lunch, and we'll use all that anyway. No offence is taken, and this is supposed to be about making you happy so if you're happier not going, we don't go.”

How Derek was able to so easily swap and change plans, Will had no idea, but he was certain there was some reason why they shouldn't. Cancelling plans was rude and he was probably being an inconvenience to suggest it, and—

“Will. I already screwed up once today. Can we please do what you want to do and go back to your dorm?”

“I didn't say—”

“No, but I can see you're talking yourself out of it.”

Derek held his wrist and tugged him away from the car. Chowder hovered a few feet away and joined them as they passed him.

They walked into Cait on their way out of the parking lot.

“Change of plan,” Chowder said, and he grabbed her hand to turn her around. Her eyes widened in surprise, but she followed them without question.

Will thought about what Derek had said and about why it bothered him so much. “You didn't screw up.”

Derek rolled his eyes, but Will could see that he was uneasy. “Yeah, I did. You cried at breakfast. And Chowder had to come downstairs and quietly explain that it's your birthday and you've found your birthday hard to enjoy ever since… I… You asked us not to make a fuss and I ignored that so I definitely screwed up. And I'm sorry.”

Will sighed. He didn't know how many times he would have to tell Derek it was okay, but he hated himself for not reacting in the right way to begin with. “I told you, I appreciate it.”

“I shouldn't have sprung it on you as a surprise in front of everyone. I should have just told you and then you'd know and be ready for it and you could have enjoyed it more.”

Dan had always said Will was shit with surprises. He remembered his thirteenth birthday when they had returned from a morning with some prospective foster parents to find the Children's Home decorated in banners and the amount of glitter only somewhere which housed a dozen grade schoolers had access to. Will had a meltdown there in the doorway, their prospective foster parents looking on and deciding that they didn't want this child who was having a tantrum at the age of thirteen over some children singing happy birthday to him.

“I should be better,” he muttered.

“No, baby,” Derek said back, pulling Will in close. “It's okay. Your feelings are valid, and  _normal_.”

Will didn't feel particularly normal, but he let Derek guide him up the stairs to their dorms.

“Where did C and Cait go?” Will asked in a choked up voice.

“I think they were giving us a bit of space. They'll catch up soon.”

They made a nest of pillows in the top corner of the bed and Derek opened his arms for Will.

“Hey,” he said, when they were comfortably settled. “I love you.”

Will lifted his chin, silently asking for a kiss. He smiled when Derek complied. “I love you, too. Thank you.”

“For coming back here? Will, I'd already pushed it too far today, I wouldn't—”

“No. I mean, yes that's part of it but thank you for everything you've done today to try and give me the best day.”

Derek kissed him again, this time with a rare ferocity which left Will's lips tingling. He followed Derek’s mouth when he leaned back, and Derek dropped his arm from Will's shoulder to around his waist.

“I love you,” Derek said again, and this time he accompanied it with a shrug. “I always want you to be happy.”

 _“Sap,”_ Will said, shaking his head in disbelief, but he wrapped his arms tightly around Derek's neck and clung onto him.

“He's the sappiest,” Chowder’s voice called through the door. “Can we come in or do you want us to circle the block again?”

“Come in,” Will said into Derek's neck.

Cait crawled onto the bed next to them. “Hey. Happy birthday.”

Will nodded and offered her a smile.

“I got you this.”

Her gifts were a thermos mug with  _Eat. Sleep. Hockey. Repeat._  printed on the side, a Sudoku cube puzzle, and a new roll of hockey tape.

“Mine, mine, mine,” Derek said, scrambling off the bed and falling on his ass.

Will stared at him. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah." Derek dismissed his concern with a wave of his hand. "I’ll be back in a second!”

With a fond smile, Will watched him run from the room.

“He’s like a puppy,” Cait said. Will leaned away when she poked him in the cheek, but a grin spread across his face, and he swayed back into her. “A lovesick puppy,” she added, knocking their shoulders together.

Will rolled his eyes. “Shut up.”

“It’s cute.”

“Thanks for the presents, Cait. You can stop making fun of me now.”

“Ooh, I don’t know about that.”

Derek had his arms full of wrapped gifts stacked on top of each other when he returned. The top one fell into Will’s lap before Derek had the chance to put any of them down gently.

“Ow. Thanks.”

“Open this one first,” Derek demanded. All the presents fell to the floor.

“Which one?” Will asked, staring at the four parcels scattered around his feet and the fifth in his lap.

Derek retrieved the largest package from the floor - a soft floppy one which was light when it fell into Will’s hands. Will slid his finger under the opening of wrapping paper and carefully pulled it open without letting it rip.

“Is it… a picnic blanket?” he asked in confusion when he saw the red and white plaid.

“Oh my  _God,_ Poindexter, it’s not a fucking picnic blanket. Look.” Derek pulled the material out of the paper and Will found himself clouded in darkness.

“What the fuck, Nursey?” he asked, trying to bat the material away from his face.

“Stay still,” Derek told him, as Will finally found the edge of the blanket and pulled it down to his neck. He looked around. It hadn’t been the edge of the blanket, after all, but rather a hole in the middle of it. There was a flap to the right of his neck, which on closer inspection turned out to be a hood, and a sleeve down his front.

“It’s… a hoodie blanket,” he said in a deadpan voice. What had compelled Derek to buy this, he had no idea, but he had to admit that it was very soft.

Derek grinned at him, and held out one of the other presents. “This one, next.”

Will shifted and shuffled until he had twisted the blanket enough to fit his arms through the sleeves and pushed them up so that his hands were free.

The next parcel was the first book in some sci fi series Will hadn’t even heard of, but the blurb made it look interesting enough. There was a desk organizer which Will pointed out to Derek wasn’t so much a present as it was him replacing the one he had broken, but there was a smile on Will’s face when he placed it on his desk all the same. The new desk organizer was better than the old one.

“Now this one,” Derek said, tapping where the hoodie blanket covered the present in Will’s lap.

“Is there any system to the order you’re making me open these in?”

“No. Open this one next.”

Will shook his head as he fumbled with the present to untangle it from the blanket and pulled the paper off …a notepad. He looked up at Derek curiously.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever tried keeping a diary but I thought it might help? With anxious thoughts? I don’t know.”

Will ran his hands over the cover of the notepad and nodded. He had never tried it, but he had read enough online advice to know it was a common suggestion. “Maybe.”

His final present was a new utility knife, because Will’s had started to go rusty and blunted. Will placed it next to the desk organizer and looked over his haul. “Derek… This is too much. How much did you  _spend?”_

“Nope. You’re not allowed to think about that. I’m not telling you. It’s your birthday and it’s my job to spoil you and before you say anything, I’m not expecting you to try and match this, I will love anything you get me for my birthday even if it’s just a handful of daisies stolen from the LAX bros’ front yard.”

Will wrapped his arms around his body and buried his chin into the soft fabric of his new hoodie blanket. A wave of fatigue washed over him, and he felt overwhelmed by everything Derek had given him that day. “I’m not going to give you stolen daisies for your birthday,” he said, weakly. Tears threatened to overflow. “Oh my God. You did so much.”

“Was that… okay?”

Will reached out and pulled Derek onto the bed next to him so that he could curl up against his body, safe in his coccoon of fluffy cotton. “Thank-you.”

“Of course, baby,” Derek replied, with a kiss to his forehead. “But you’ll tell me if I ever go too far?”

“You’re the most extra and I hate it but… You done good.” Will hoped that Derek could hear in his voice that he didn’t really mean it when he said he hated it. Judging by his smile and roll of the eyes, they were on the same page despite his inability to communicate what he really felt.

“Netflix?” Derek asked.

Will shifted until he was comfortable and reached a hand out to get Chowder and Cait to scooch in closer. “Netflix. And key lime pie.”


	4. ???

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team start to get to know the tadpoles a bit more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for an anxiety attack, details and where to skip in end notes.  
> Discussions of therapy and counseling.  
> Discussions of underage drinking and canon-typical college party culture.
> 
> I'd like to thank Bryce for all the info on New England hockey and all the headcanoning and brainstorming about how the Falconers would affect it, as well as for Whiskey's opinion on the matter, some of which may or may not be quoted word for word. <3333333

They had all fallen into poor habits over the summer so, by the time the third day of conditioning rolled around, the whole team ached.

“Have any of you ever felt close to quitting hockey?” Tango asked, when they got back to the Haus. He rubbed his shins to try to loosen the muscles. Nobody answered straight away. They sipped on Gatorade or protein shakes, and passed around a bag of pretzels.

“Oh, Lord, yes,” Bitty finally said. Will remembered his defeated expression the year before when he kept collapsing on the ice in fear of being checked.

“I didn’t know if I wanted to carry on with it after I wasn’t drafted,” Holster admitted, “but I’m glad I did.”

“When Providence won the bid for an expansion team over Hartford, I nearly rage quit but my coach said that was petty and he wouldn’t accept my resignation.”

The room turned to Whiskey in shock. He had never said so many words to them at once before.

“Does that… mean you don't like the Falconers?” Bitty asked. He almost sounded offended on Jack’s behalf.

“Why would you break up the Bruins fan base when the Whalers are still one of the best merchandise franchises? Hartford is  _right there_  and wanting a team and they don't even give us the farm team!”

“Hartford have the Wolf Pack, they wouldn’t—” Nursey cut off when Chowder hit him in the leg, which was probably for the best because Whiskey was glaring at him sourly. Will felt defensive for his home state which now homed the Falconer’s farm team, but he stayed quiet. He might have guessed that Whiskey was from Connecticut, from certain idiosyncrasies in his speech, but it wasn’t wholly a New England accent. If pushed, Will would say it wasn't wholly an American accent, but Will had learnt his lesson with Derek about asking those sorts of questions.

“I should have realized you were from Connecticut,” he said. Whiskey’s eyes widened, and Will was quick to add, “There’s not many places still that you can have a late December birthday and start college at seventeen, unless you’ve skipped a grade or something. Where did you play?”

Whiskey still looked a little panicked, but he forced his face into a neutral expression and cleared his throat awkwardly. “It was a small team near New Haven.”

“What NHL team do you support?” Holster asked.

Whiskey frowned, as if the question were a particularly difficult one on an important exam paper. “I don't particularly have a team. I guess I sort of follow the Habs.”

“Montreal?” Ransom asked in surprise. “What about Quebec City? Do you have sympathy for them? They lost out on the bid, too.”

“They were competition,” Whiskey told him solemnly.

“Double whammy for Jack,” Holster mused. “Doesn’t go home to Montreal like so many of their fans wanted and goes to Providence instead.”

Whiskey’s face twisted. “Yeah,” he said in a bitter tone.

“What classes are y’all looking at this semester?” Bitty asked quickly. Whiskey slumped back in his chair, emitting an aura of chill to rival Derek's, but Will could see the relief in his eyes over the subject change. Tango jumped in with questions of what everybody thought were the best classes and credits to get done in the first year, and Derek raved about his foreign poetry seminar. Chowder dithered and debated because at some point he was going to have to decide what his major was going to be but he had no idea.

“It’s easy for, say, Dex,” he said, and his hands flopped forlornly by his side. “He’s got a load of classes he  _has_ to do for an Electrical Engineering and Computer Science major. But then what if I decide I want to do a particular major but then I can’t or I have to try and fit in all these classes I didn’t do?”

“Oh no,” Tango said. “What if you pick the wrong major? Or you can’t decide? Or you get to senior year and you change your mind?”

“That’s what Academic Advisors are for,” Wicky told him in an even voice. “It will be fine, Tango. And you, too, Chowder. You’ll figure it out. Don’t worry about it.”

Chowder nodded, still looking a little helpless. “At least I’ll have all my distributional requirements covered by the end of this year. So that’s one less thing to worry about.”

“Have you already figured out what you’re doing for them, then?” Will asked.

“Oh. Well, no.” Chowder scratched the back of his neck. “But if I don’t know what my major is going to be, I might as well get them all done! I’ve only got to get in my writing credits, and one more Social Science, and I decided to keep up with Chinese so that sorts out one class.”

Will nodded, opened his mouth and hesitated. Last term, Chowder had said that he didn’t want to take Computer Science, because he knew he didn’t want to do it as a major and he wanted to figure out what his major should be. But surely there wasn’t any harm in giving him the offer of a class that would get his credits, and which would mean they could share a class together again? “I, uh. I know you’re not really interested in Computer Science, but one of the classes I'm doing counts as Social Science? Cyberspace and Law?”

Chowder blinked at him. “Oh! I’ll look at it. Okay.”

“I’m doing a couple of lit classes where you could get your writing credit,” Derek offered.

Chowder looked less enthusiastic about those, which Will took as encouragement.

* * *

Conditioning seemed to fly by and before they knew it, class shopping had begun. Will had planned his classes for this semester before even going home for the summer. The only thing that would disrupt his schedule would be the classes no longer being offered, but luckily he didn’t have to worry about that, so he signed up for those classes alone, while everyone else rushed from class to class, in a hectic schedule. Will enjoyed having time for extra skating practice and to get a head start on reading lists and problem sets.

Tango continued to be full of questions, and their on-ice practices provided him with more opportunities to be curious. Ransom and Holster weren’t helping the matter, as they kept introducing new fines. It was confusing enough for Will to keep track, and he couldn’t help but think they were deliberately doing it to muddle Tango. Either that, or they had expensive plans in mind. Chowder, who already made no efforts to avoid fines for public displays of affection with Cait, was the quickest to rack up debt. Derek was the first to be fined for dropping a pie, but it was Chowder who received the next two fines for the same offence. And it was Tango and Bitty who were caught having a conversation right on the S in the locker room, for which both of them were told to pay up.

“You should be more careful,” Will told Chowder after yet another fine in the dining hall for the number of pet names passed between him and Cait. “You don't want to spend all your money on fines.”

Chowder rolled his eyes. “It's going back into the team and the Haus. I don't mind.”

“I don't know,” Will said, thinking of the sin bin tally on the whiteboard in the locker room. “It feels like they might have different plans with this, given how many new fines there are. I mean, dropping a pie? You and Nursey manage that five times a day between you.”

“They can't use the money for anything that isn't the team or the Haus. They're not dishonest.”

Will hummed thoughtfully. Chowder had a point, but he was still suspicious.

* * *

Their first preseason roadie started on Friday. Will and Derek went straight to the bus, and found themselves the first to arrive despite running late. Without stopping to wait for the others, they did a loop of the bus to check all was in good working order. It was still strange for Will to have someone accompany him, especially someone who didn’t try to help look for punctures or other faults in the body of the bus. Derek — and Chowder, too — knew that Will needed to check it for himself to be able to travel without constant fear of breakdowns, which meant that Will didn’t have to tell Derek the best way to check, or worry about him getting in his way. He was simply there for the company as Will made the necessary checks. An added bonus to him being there instead of Chowder, was that he also gave Will a long, comforting hug behind the bus, along with a couple of forehead kisses.

They pulled apart much too soon and yet cut it fine, for Coach Hall turned up barely seconds later.

“Morning, boys. Is nobody else here?”

“Uh, no, not yet,” Will replied with an anxious glance around. They were going to be so late leaving Samwell.

Coach Hall didn't look too worried as he knocked on the door of the bus and boarded to talk to the driver.

* * *

Soon enough, the team appeared and Will told himself, as he strapped himself into the aisle seat next to Derek, that it hadn't taken as long as it felt. They weren't late. They had hours before their game.

He closed his eyes and tried to let the noise of the team fade into white noise, but Holster's voice seemed to echo, and Ransom and Bitty kept switching the song playing through Bitty's speakers in an argument over what mood they should be aiming for. Even Whiskey's calm timbre could be heard, quietly telling Tango where they were and what they were passing to answer his endless questioning.

His stomach swooped, as if the bus was accelerating steeply, and Will’s eyes flew open. Despite himself, he looked out the window, just as a delivery truck switched lanes to be driving alongside them. Will’s head span. His hand flew forwards as he automatically reached for a steering wheel which wasn’t in front of him, and his foot eased down on a brake which also wasn’t there.

“Dex?”

Derek sounded concerned, but his use of Will’s hockey nickname was reminder enough that they were surrounded by other people; people who Will didn’t want to see him panic over being on the road, or driving closer to a truck than he would if it were him in control. Will shook his head, though he wanted to cry. He wanted to scream and ask why this was still happening to him. He was on medication and he was supposed to be on the road to recovery, and yet he felt like the past week he had relapsed more than he ever had before he had a diagnosis.

“Will,” Derek said, his voice barely more than a whisper, his lips close enough to Will’s ear that he could feel him breathing. “You’re okay. We’re under the speed limit. We’ve got a good distance from the car in front. It’s okay.”

It was not okay.

Derek tugged his cardigan across his lap, so that he could grip Will’s hand underneath it.

“Was it better when you had your eyes closed? Maybe you should try and sleep. I’ll keep an eye on things for you?”

It sounded like a good idea, and Will tried to comply, squeezing his eyes shut again and bracing against the headrest of his seat.

“Deep breaths, Will, and try to relax your neck. Deep breaths. That’s it. You’re okay.”

“Why— Why am I— It should have— I took—”

“I know you took your meds, baby. I saw you take them. You definitely took all of them, but they can only do so much. They’re not going to completely fix it, just help to make it better, and it’s really common for PTSD to get worse around anniversaries.”

“Who told you that?”

“Google. But it sounds plausible.”

Will wasn’t quite able to laugh, but he took the fact that he registered Derek’s comment as funny as a good sign. He squeezed on his hand, ignored how clammy they were getting hidden under Derek’s cardigan, and focused on breathing.

* * *

He was still shaken up and feeling weak when the game began that evening, but a bit of a sleep and a decent meal had made it so that he  was no longer on the brink of anxiety. He could push through and play. The game provided a distraction, especially now he and Derek were the second defence pair and got more ice time than freshman year. The roadie conversation of Saturday morning was a distraction of its own, because Will couldn’t think about road accidents when he was recoiled in horror at the idea that his boyfriend would rather live in a garbage can than only be able to talk to one person the rest of his life.

"Why would you want to have lots of people to talk to when you're just going to get a disease from your garbage can home and die?"

"At least I could talk to a doctor about how to get a cure," Derek pointed out.

"Do you get to choose who you can talk to?" Chowder asked. "Ooh, except that might be worse because how could I choose between you two? Or Cait. Or Bitty, or—"

"It's still better not to live somewhere with all those germs and disease, and people throw things away in other people's garbage cans all the time so you could be trying to have a really uncomfortable nap and then get woken up by someone throwing their banana skin on top of you."

"—Lardo or Ransom or Jack—"

"I agree with Dex," Whiskey said. Will looked up, happy because so far everybody else seemed to disagree with him, but Whiskey stared out the window, his back to the rest of them, and didn't elaborate.

"Oh! Or my parents. Oh my God, I couldn't only speak to one of my parents and not the other? And not anybody else? But I can't just say I would happily never talk to my parents again."

"Face it, Dex, the only reason you'd pick the fancy house is because you don't have any friends other than Chowder anyway," Derek said, a quirk in his eyebrow. Will hit him in the stomach, and Holster shouted at them to stop fighting and shut up.

* * *

 

By the time they returned to Samwell on Sunday, they were all a little disappointed by their start to preseason, but Will was calm when he kissed Derek goodnight and retreated into his own room for a much needed good night's sleep.

They met the next morning to go to breakfast, and Derek handed Will a piece of paper torn from a notebook. Will looked over the list of days and times, followed by some phone numbers.

“What's this?”

“The times the Samwell Counsellors are open this week for existing students to re-register. And those are a couple of phone numbers for nearby therapists you can—”

Will let the paper crumple in his hand. “No.”

“Will,” Derek pleaded.

“I'm not seeing a therapist.” How many times had they had this conversation now?

“I just want you to think about it.”

“I  _have_  thought about it,” Will told him, frustration setting in. “I've thought about it even though I know I can't afford it. It's not happening.”

“If you'd just let me—”

“You can't pay for it,” Will cut in, because he knew exactly what was about to be offered. “Don't even suggest it.”

“Okay.”

Will blinked. He hadn't expected Derek to acquiesce so easily. “What?”

“Okay. You don't have to accept my money and you don't have to have therapy if you don't want. But you'll see the counsellors, won't you?”

Will looked down at his hands and opened the paper up again. “I don't know what good they can do.”

“They do help. You were better after you started seeing them. I still wish you would see a professional but you were happier and calmer last year when you were getting counselling. Please?”

Will stared at the times written in Derek's loopy cursive writing. “I'll… I'll stop in after my electronics class today. It doesn’t hurt to register at least.”

Derek pressed a kiss to his cheek. “No, it doesn’t. Thank you.”

* * *

His timetable was looking busy again once he had added a scheduled weekly chat with Ben-the-Counsellor and been accepted back at the student services center working the same administration job he had in freshman year. He was glad that he had decided not to go back to his other previous job at Stop and Shop this semester, when they would be busiest with hockey as well, because he now had so much to do each week that he was almost as busy as Derek, who was taking an extra class because of some weird determination to fit as many credits into his first couple of years as possible.

“Wow,” Chowder said when they compared finalized timetables at the end of the week. “Didn't you do an extra class or two last year, too? You're a nerd.”

Derek groaned. “They're all so interesting. Except the ones I'm doing because I have to but at least Farms found me that Psych one to do for science credit and she’ll be in that class too. And then I have to even it out with another interesting one, see?”

“Nerd.”

“Shitty said it was a good idea to do more classes now, so there’s less to worry about later.”

“Shitty wanted to triple major,” Chowder pointed out.

“Did Bitty show you his text?” Will asked. Shitty had sent the upperclassmen a photo from the library that morning, and Will was glad to see an update from him, but it made him not coming back to Samwell so real. He might never come back, now, because he had started his new life at law school, and why would he be interested in a bunch of undergraduates?

“There were so many books,” Chowder said, his head shaking in awe. “I hope he's having some breaks! Like Nursey. Work hard, party hard.”

“Yeah! See, I knew you got it, C. Why isn't he down here, like, every weekend, detoxing from con law?”

“He could study in the kitchen!  That’d be cool, right?”

“I'm not sure that would be ideal,” Will said. He wished it could happen, but it never would. The days of kegsters with Shitty were over.

“Sure it would. We're delights; anyone would be lucky to study in our presence,” Derek said.

“He knows he has an open invitation whenever he wants to come back,” Ransom said, leaning across Holster to join the conversation. “And Jack! Bits, did you say there was a new Falcs PR vid? We have to check up on Jack any way we can if he’s not coming to our kegster tomorrow.”

Bitty tapped on his phone so that he could put the video on and Ransom rushed over to watch. From the other side of the table, Will couldn’t see it, but he could hear Alexei Mashkov’s voice guiding the viewers around the practice facility. Everyone cheered when Jack showed up, and laughed at the awkward soundbite he gave the camera.

 _“Your girlfriend, so good cook, you know, so when I’m coming over?”_ came Mashkov’s voice through Bitty’s iPad speakers. Chowder dissolved into laughter next to Will.

“Jack Zimmermann has a—” started Tango, but Bitty cut across him.

“Oh my Goodness! Tater’s always making up things to tease Jack about!” he said with a shaky laugh.

“Nice,” Lardo said. “Tater seems fun.”

“So he doesn’t?” Tango asked in an undertone, as Ransom started gushing about Tater. Chowder, still laughing, shook his head.

“Bitty, you’re like low key an expert on the Falcs,” Derek said.

“Oh. Well. Jack talks about them a lot!” Bitty stuttered.

Ransom looked at Bitty out the corner of his eye. “Bro, you’re like, so good at keeping up with Jack and Shits! How often do you guys all call? I’m supes jealous.”

“Jack calls Bitty more than you call March,” Holster said through a mouthful of food.

Ransom narrowed his eyes. “...Dude.”

Will picked at his toast. “Maybe they will come and visit us, then.” He frowned. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to get his hopes up for that to happen, only to be disappointed when they never had the time or chance, and gradually forgot about Samwell.

“Yeah!” Ransom agreed. “How come Jack hasn’t introduced us to Mashkov yet? He owes us! Right?”

Will wasn’t sure he would say that much, but Holster was already talking about the next day’s kegster.

* * *

Alexei Mashkov didn’t turn up to their first kegster of the year, but Holster insisted that it was only because they had asked Jack to invite him so last minute and Jack wasn’t coming either. It seemed quiet without Shitty, even though the Haus was packed, the music turned up to full-blast, and the room was warm with bodies dancing close. Chowder and Cait were giggling about something in the corner. Bitty hung back in the kitchen, attention split between his phone, keeping the food bowls filled, and watching Tango, who had already drunk two cups of tub juice. Derek was with Ransom and Holster, and Will was left wondering if kegsters had always been this lonely. This felt like high school parties, where he had been the outsider. Between Derek’s attention and Chowder’s friendship, Bitty's care for his frogs and Shitty’s determination to help Will fit in (to help him be better), Will had never felt like this at Samwell before.

He wasn't the only one on the edge of things, and at least he could repay all those who had made him feel welcome with the team by extending the same courtesy to the new tadpoles.

“Hey.”

Whiskey flinched away from him when Will sidled up to him, even though he had carefully left a gap between them. “Oh. Dex. Hi.”

“Are you having a good time?”

“I guess.”

“You don’t have to drink that if you don’t want,” Will pressed, gesturing to the mostly untouched cup in Whiskey’s hand.

“Oh.”

“Seriously. I know they talk big, but they’re not going to push you to drink. Jack didn’t drink very much, you know?”

“Jack Zimmermann?”

Will nodded. “They won't care whether you don't want to drink because of meds or staying healthy or because you're underage and don't want to get into that culture yet or  _whatever._ It doesn’t matter why. I promise you if you say you don't want to drink they won't pressure you. And if anyone does give you shit for it, you let me know, okay? I've got your back.”

Whiskey chewed on his bottom lip. “Thanks, Will. Uh. Dex. That means a lot.”

“If you want to call me Will, too, I don't mind. The rest of the team call me Dex and I guess a lot of people at Samwell do now because of that, but nobody else does. And if—”

“Dex!” Chowder shouted. “Get over here and dance with me.”

“I'm talking to—” Will tried to explain, but Whiskey shook his head to let Will know he didn't mind as Chowder dragged him into the middle of the party and Ransom topped his drink up with a measuring jug full of tub juice.

* * *

 

Derek was disgustingly alert the next morning as he dragged Will to the Haus, talking non-stop about the possibility of pancakes.

Bitty squinted at them, blearily, over a mug of coffee when they walked into the Haus. There were no pancakes cooking. “What are you two doing here?”

Derek looked around, hopefully. “Bro. Are there going to be pancakes?”

“What?”

“Your pancakes. The ultimate hangover cure, you know? Poindexter needs one.”

Will groaned. Pancakes sounded good, but he wasn’t convinced his stomach was settled enough for one.

Bitty smiled, looking suddenly flattered. “Why, Holster said almost the same thing last night. That’s why I got up this morning, and made some batter.” He got up, put a pan on the stove, and took a bowl of batter out the fridge in one fluid movement.

“Is it—” Derek started.

“Almond milk. And olive oil.”

“I love you.”

“You shush, Derek Nurse. As if I'd ever leave you out of breakfast. Dex, can you get another pan out? I think we’ll both have to be cooking them to get enough made before everyone else gets here.”

Will swayed as he stood but he forced himself to help and sure enough, the moment Chowder heard the commotion and came down to see what was happening in the kitchen, texts were sent out and the whole team descended on the Haus.

Whiskey walked in behind a curious Tango, looked around and back-tracked. “Oh. I didn’t realize it was— No, thanks. I’ll just go to the dining hall.”

“Don’t be silly,” Bitty said, holding a plate of pancakes towards the tadpole.

“I don’t want pancakes.”

“Oh, well. I can make you something else! What would you like? We’ve got eggs, as long as Holster didn’t eat them in the middle of the night, again, and even if we don’t someone better go and buy some more.” Bitty shot Holster a withering look. “Or we’ve got bacon! Which I know we still have because Holster doesn’t eat it, and I would’ve smelled it if someone cooked  _that_ in the middle of the night.”

“I’ll go to the dining hall,” Whiskey repeated, already halfway out the door.

“Whiskey, sweetheart…”

“I’m not a child, or your  _sweetheart,_ or whatever else you think,” Whiskey snapped. “I don’t need you to make me breakfast, and I don’t need your  _mothering_.”

“You’re seventeen, so you’re kind of—” Ollie started, but he trailed off at Whiskey’s sour glare. “Okay. Not a child. We get it.”

The door slammed behind Whiskey and Will winced when the sound painfully reverberated around his head.

Bitty’s phone chimed with a text, and as soon as he looked at it, he lit up, the worry sliding off his face as the news his phone brought him washed away all thoughts of Whiskey’s anger.

“Okay, Bits?” Ransom asked.

“Oh! Uh. Yeah. Jack’s going to pop in later. He wants to see everyone.”

Ransom and Holster bounced in excitement.

“Oh bro, bro, maybe he’ll bring Mashkov!” Ransom gasped, hitting Holster repeatedly on the arm.

“Text him!” Holster gasped.

Lardo chuckled, looking at her own phone. “Meanwhile, kayaking somewhere in Maine with a bunch of Harvard bots…” She turned her phone around and Will was the first to be able to read her message thread with Shitty, complete with pictures of the Maine coastline. Will felt a tug of fondness for his eccentric former teammate.

“I,” he hesitated, “miss Shitty?” It was a surprise to realize, especially thinking back to when they had barely got on. Shitty hadn’t even been one of the people who Will had told about his OCD and PTSD diagnoses, but he had provided Will with the literature to answer questions about the LGBT community others hadn’t been able to, and he had done so while thinking Will was straight, but he was never too much of an asshole about it. Sure, he had ripped into him a few times after Will had said some ignorant things, but that had been wholly deserved.

Tango frowned at his pancakes. “I know you’re probably upset with him, but can I ask Whiskey to come back here? To meet— Oh! That’s if it’s okay for us to meet him? Maybe he doesn’t want to meet us tadpoles. He is Jack Zimmermann, after all.” He blinked when he saw the upperclassmen staring at him. “Weren’t you talking about Jack Zimmermann?”

“We’re not upset with Whiskey,” Bitty said, but the tightness of his smile said otherwise.

“Yeah, Jack Zimmermann,” Ransom said. “Of course he’ll want to meet you! Definitely get Whiskey back here. We want him to feel part of the team, and just because pancakes aren’t his thing, doesn’t mean he’s excluded from everything else.”

Will’s next bite of pancake turned his stomach, and he scrambled to his feet. “I, uh, think I’m going to go for a walk. Fresh air. Something.”

He was ten yards away from the Haus when he realized he wasn’t alone.

“You should throw up,” Derek suggested. He was still holding his plate of pancakes. “Get it out your system.”

“Nursey, no,” Chowder joined. “That will just make him feel worse and then he won’t have any food in him! The fresh air will be good. I’ll text Cait and get her to meet us at the Pond with Tylenol.”

“You two don’t have to—” Will pressed his lips together, wincing when his own voice made his head hurt so much he wanted to be sick.

Derek wrapped an arm around his waist and dragged him in the direction of Lake Quad. “We’re not just going to leave you. It’s okay if you need to be sick.”

“I don’t get sick,” Will told him, but he let his weight fall on Derek.

Will felt better after a couple of hours of sitting under a tree, leaning on Derek, listening to his friends and sipping on the bottle of water Cait had bought him. She didn’t look so great herself, and perhaps that was why she didn’t take off her sunglasses the entire time they were there, but Will could see the mark on her neck which was definitely made by Chowder’s mouth, so he didn’t want to ask how their night had gone.

* * *

When they returned to the Haus, Jack was leaning against a counter in the kitchen. Whiskey and Tango stared at him in awe, while Ransom and Holster bombarded him with questions about Mashkov (who they were now calling Tater, apparently).

“I— I have a question, Mr Zimmermann?” Tango said, raising his hand next to his ear. Will was impressed he had managed to hold his questions off for so long.

“Jack,” Jack corrected.

“Right. I mean, okay, Jack! Um. I’m Tango.”

Jack smiled with half his lips in a way that on someone else might have looked like a smirk, but somehow on Jack it wasn’t. “Yes, Holster said. What did you want to know, Tango?”

“Um. What was the biggest change? Going from NCAA to NHL?”

Jack thought about it for long enough that Will became curious himself about the answer. “The biggest change is probably my diet,” Jack finally said. “Less pie.”

Derek snorted.

“That’s a disappointment for you,” Cait said, pinching a bite of blueberry pie off Chowder’s plate while he was distracted looking over Ransom’s shoulder at pictures of Tater and Snowy on Jack’s phone.

“What's your favorite pie?” Tango asked.

Holster shook his head. “No, no, Jack, who's your favorite teammate?”

“Apple. Falcs teammate or Samwell? I’m not answering for Samwell. They're all great. Thirdy’s good to be on a line with. We work really well together. _Almost_ as good as Bittle was to play with.”

Bitty flushed crimson.

“Tater is the easiest to get on with off the ice. And Marty is cool. He's helped me settle in a lot.”

“Are NHL locker rooms grosser than NCAA?” Lardo asked.

“How many games are your parents planning on going to?”

“Can we have freebies?”

“Are you excited to play against the Sharks?”

The questions came thick and fast and Jack, smiling around at them and looking happier than Will thought he had ever seen him before, answered them willingly. The NHL must be treating him well.

“You look happy,” Will said, when there was a lull in the interrogations.

“Yeah,” Jack said. He looked around the room, his eyes stopping on the fresh pie in Bitty's hands. “I am.”

* * *

“Oh my God,” Ransom said, three days later. “We should have asked Jack what his ideal date is.”

“April twenty-fifth?” Tango asked.

Will choked back a laugh, which he hoped nobody had noticed, but the way Derek raised an eyebrow at him suggested he had been caught out understanding the joke. Luckily, nobody else reacted, not even Bitty who was stirring his mashed potato with his fork, with a twisted expression. It must be difficult for Bitty, Will decided, because he clearly had a crush on Jack, and Jack was one of his best friends.

“Why do you want to know what his ideal date is?” Chowder asked.

“People might want suggestions,” Ransom said. “You know. Like the tadpoles.”

“The tadpoles have more important things than dating on their mind, Ransom," Bitty said dryly. "Like school work. I hope y’all are being sensible and getting your required credits out the way early. I tell you, it’s no fun having to do beginner’s French as a junior. Not that you’d be able to complete  _all_ your language requirement in freshman year, but—”

“I finished my language requirement in freshman year,” Derek said absently. Bitty looked so surprised and upset, that Will didn’t dare tell him that he had been in the same class.

“Ooh, I’m not sure what to do about language requirement?” Tango said. “My family are all multilingual, but it’s picking  _which_ of those to learn, and I’ve only really been able to speak them conversationally? And not… perfectly. I don’t know. Which do you think?” He turned to Chowder whose eyes widened.

“Oh, uh… What are the options?”

“Hey, what about my dilemma?” Ransom demanded. “Nursey, what’s your ideal date?”

“Some Netflix and chill.”

Will felt himself going red, and though he knew everyone was paying more attention to Ransom’s spluttering, he couldn’t help but worry what they might think. There weren’t many reasons why Will would have such a strong reaction to Derek’s ideal date, after all. Chowder pressed his foot down on Will’s foot.

“Oh, I love Netflix!” he said.

Derek knocked over his Powerade . Will choked on his own breath, but soon he was laughing, too, giggling uncontrollably. The funniest part of it, really, was the reactions of the rest of the team, who all thought Chowder was being naive. They had no idea how many double dates with the three of them and Cait had been sat on one of their beds watching Netflix, eating pizza and, as Derek would say,  _chilling_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will is already anxious before he gets on the bus, and it doesn't get better. The scene fades rather than carrying through to the end of the attack. If you want to skip, it's the entire section starting 'Soon enough, the team appeared and Will told himself, as he strapped himself into the aisle seat next to Derek, that it hadn't taken as long as it felt." The next section starts "He was still shaken up and feeling weak when the game began that evening, but a bit of a sleep and a decent meal had made it so that he  was no longer on the brink of anxiety."


	5. Routine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will loves routine, but his favorite days in September both involved taking a break from routine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank-you once again to my fave New England guru for all the making me feel like I've actually been to the Big E and then for reading this chapter through for me and shouting encouragement <33

For the weeks that followed, Will settled into a routine. Routine made him feel calm, made him content, kept his anxiety at bay. All of his classes were Computer Science or Electrical Engineering and all of them were going well. He shared one of them with Chowder, which happened to be the one Will found least comfortable as it focused less on programming and more on learning. But Chowder was there, so it was okay. He spent a third of his nights in Derek's bed, and of the nights in his own bed, Derek was there for half of them. The nights alone were necessary to reboot, to sleep a little better than he did when squashed in a dorm single with another 6’2” hockey player, and to get a bit of breathing space. By the morning, he usually missed Derek badly enough to push him back into his room when he opened the door for breakfast and kiss him thoroughly good morning.

Somehow, all the Frogs had managed to wrangle Fridays off, so the days between morning practice and departure for roadies were spent the four of them together, either indulging in double dates that would look like friends hanging out to an outsider, or getting their studying out of the way before the weekend, or binging the latest Netflix show and eating pie. They celebrated Cait’s birthday with sushi and cocktails at the Dig, the volleyball team’s house, on a Thursday evening and the next day they had a Frog pile in Chowder’s room with a cherry pie Bitty baked specially.

The team were the same as they had always been, even if they had a different roster to last year. They still threw the occasional kegster, and Will still spent most weeks learning something new about religions he had only vaguely known about before coming to Samwell, especially when Jewish New Year rolled around.

Work, as could be predicted, had soon turned into him fixing every laptop that passed through the Student Services Center, as well as a couple of printers and the photocopier in the office. At the Haus, as well, he spent a lot of time with his toolbox, be it nailing back down the wonky floorboard in the hallway outside Chowder’s room, changing the light bulbs on the porch (nobody else could work out how to get the old ones out), or fixing the shower head in the bathroom shared by Bitty, Ransom and Holster (it turned out it just needed screwing tighter to stop the water spurting out the side, but Holster refused to own up to knocking it loose in the first place, despite being the one who was too tall for the shower). Derek had got a job of his own, mostly out of pettiness after Will pointed out that he had never had a job, but whatever his motivations for getting the job, he now proofed papers at the Student Writing Center on Tuesday afternoons.

Hockey, of course, was the center of his routine, and everything else had to revolve around practices and preseason games. He and Derek were working with X-Gray and Kilo to get them up to team standard, while Ransom and Holster led the team as a whole and TiVo and Teddy got used to working together now that TiVo’s old partner, Mortzy, had graduated. Whiskey was shining through in practices, with a speed across the ice to rival Bitty's, and skilled stick handling that even Chowder found hard to track. Despite being someone they had expected to start on the third or fourth line, he was dragging himself up quickly and easily. Wicky got frustrated whenever the coaches tried out a new line because he never knew if it would be him or Whiskey first and “Whisk” and “Wicks” were too close for it not to be confusing. After a too many men penalty in their penultimate preseason game because Wicky tried to skate with the wrong line, the coaches resorted to their first names.

* * *

There were two highlights of September. The first was the Tuesday evening that they piled into a train carriage which would take them to Providence. Shitty joined them, and he pulled them all into hugs and ruffled Will’s hair, before sitting down to lament loudly at how little time for fun law school allowed him.

“But at least I can have a night off for the one and only, the glorious, Jack Laurent Zimmermann. And what a beaut! Sending us these,” he said tugging on his Falconers jersey. Jack had sent enough for the whole team, including the tadpoles, and a hoodie for Lardo. Everyone except for Derek and Holster had worn theirs that evening. Derek had dressed in a plain t-shirt, ignoring Will’s roll of the eyes. Holster had worn his Samwell jersey because “Jack shouldn’t forget his roots”.

(Chowder was wearing a Sharks hoodie underneath his jersey, but nobody expected anything less.)

As the train sped towards Providence, their conversation was loud enough to draw disgruntled looks from the other passengers. Holster read aloud everything he could find about the game on NHL news sites and twitter feeds, and Ransom obsessed over Jack’s hint that they may be able to meet the Falconers after the game. Chowder, meanwhile, was reassuring them that he still loved the Sharks, even if he thought Snowy was cooler than Martin Jones.

“Not that I don’t think Jones is cool! But he was one of the  _ Kings,  _ so I have to learn to trust him before I can love him as much as I loved Nemo.”

“It’s good to know your love is dependent on which team someone plays for, C,” Derek said. “You don’t love Niemi now that he’s not a Shark?”

Chowder looked torn. “Shut up,” he grumbled.

“Oh, sweetie,” Cait laughed and kissed him on the cheek, ignoring the calls of  _ “Fine!”  _ from across the aisle of the train.

They were buzzing as they made their way from the station to the Dunkin Donuts Center, opting to walk because it was cheaper than getting an Uber, easier with the inner city traffic, and somehow Bitty knew the way. (Will guessed he must have memorized it before they left, and perhaps he had Google Maps up on his phone because he did keep glancing at the screen). He shepherded them through the streets, and their good moods carried them quickly.

“Look!” Ransom shouted, when a billboard with Mashkov on came into view.

“Holy fuck,” Holster said, stopping in the middle of the path to gaze up at it. Derek walked into his back. “Do you think Jack’s on one?”

“Ooh, maybe!” Chowder said, looking around as if he expected another billboard to appear out of thin air. “We should try to find one with him on.”

“Or we could go on to the stadium and we might see one anyway,” Will said. “And we'll also see him in person and we can ask Jack if he’s on one.”

“Not far to go!” Bitty called over his shoulder. Derek gave Holster a shove to get him to move.

* * *

The other side of security, they browsed the official merchandise and contemplated food and drinks. Will thought it went without saying that everything was overpriced and not worth it, but Holster bought a jacket and Shitty had money out to buy a child-size Zimmermann jersey before Bitty stopped him.

Their seats were grouped together across two different rows, so the defencemen took the back row and let Cait, Chowder, Bitty, Lardo and Shitty file in front of them. Will jogged his leg up and down impatiently as the rest of the group carried on their loud conversations. Shitty chirped Bitty for bringing pies, and Ransom, Holster and Derek were seeking out Zimmermann jerseys in the crowd.

The background music grew louder and accelerated towards a climax. The livestream of the Falconers making their way through the tunnel appeared on the screens, and Derek grabbed Will’s arm in excitement.

“This is it!”

“It’s just warm ups,” Will pointed out, but inside he was bubbling. He hadn’t told anyone except Derek, but this was the first NHL game he had ever been to live and it was exhilarating just to be stood in the stadium (even if it was the same stadium they had lost the Frozen Four Championship in mere months before).

“Oh my Gosh…” Chowder gasped as the first players stepped onto the ice. Derek leaned forward to clap his hands on his shoulders. He turned to flash them a wide grin, but quickly whipped his attention back to the Falconers. “Zimmermann!” he shouted, pointing at one of the Falconers. Will’s eyes snapped up and scanned the backs of jerseys until he saw the number one. “That’s Jack!” Chowder added unnecessarily. “Go Jack!”

Will flinched away from Derek, who screamed in his ear. “There he fucking is!”

On the other side of Bitty, Lardo and Shitty were chanting Jack’s name.

“Oh my God he looked right at us,” Chowder babbled excitedly. He twisted in his seat so he could hit Will’s legs to make sure he was looking.

Will nodded. “Yeah, he’s looking. So’s St Martin.”

“Oh my  _ God!” _

Even from across the ice, it was obvious that Jack was smiling at them. He lingered a little longer than Will would have expected before he turned away to start his warm up routine.

“Ooh, do you see what Snowy’s doing?” Chowder said. Will nodded, even though Chowder couldn’t see him and he was fairly sure he was talking to Cait. “Maybe I should add that to my pregame.”

On the other side of Derek, Ransom and Holster were watching Mashkov, and screaming to try and get his attention, or to tell Jack to get his attention, not that either of them reacted. The stadium was loud enough to drown out even Holster’s voice.

Will had been playing hockey for fourteen years, and yet had never before appreciated how long warm ups took. When it was him on the ice, time seemed to fly, but watching the Falconers skate around and hit pucks at the ice and stretch their limbs dragged and dragged. Each moment took forever, so that even if Will thought it interesting that they were doing a section of their warm up in a particular way, the novelty faded long before they moved onto the next drill. He just wanted to watch some hockey, now.

It seemed like an eternity had passed when Snowy moved off to the neutral zone for a few final stretches before exiting the ice. The backup goalie replaced him as the other players continued to shoot. Will’s eyes flickered to his watch.

After gathering in front of the net for some close shots and scuffles, the players dribbled off the ice, until only a few remained. Will wasn’t particularly surprised that Jack was one of the stragglers. He had been the same at Samwell. Tater held his stick up to the crowd in farewell and, as the fans went wild, he patted Jack on the shoulder and geared him off the ice.

“Not long to go now,” Derek muttered, patting Will on the knee. He wasn’t sure whether Derek was reassuring him that the game would start on time, or whether he was trying to stay mindful of the fact that Will was used to watching games like this on TV, where pregame was almost completely cut out, and gaps like this would be filled with commercials.

“Yeah. Do you think Jack’s nervous?”

“Probably. Are you?”

It struck Will as a strange question for a moment, but then he realized that the lump in his throat and the butterflies in his stomach were, in fact, nerves. “Yeah.”

“Me too. I hope he has a good game.”

Will nodded. There was a lot riding on this game for Jack, even if it was preseason. A lot of people would be watching.

* * *

Will’s throat was hoarse from screaming, his feet hurt from jumping up and down, and he had a bit of a headache from the lights of the stadium and having nothing to drink all game except for a sip of Derek’s coke. The excitement wasn’t over, though. Rather than to the exits, Bitty ushered them in the opposite direction, and past a security guard who eyed them warily, but waved them on before Holster had finished listing their names. Jack met them in the corridor, and they greeted him with croaky hollers of congratulations.

“Thanks,” Jack said, ducking his head in embarrassment. “And thanks for being here.”

Shitty rushed forwards for a hug. “Of course we’re here, bro. Thanks for the fucking tickets.”

“Yeah, of course, I—” Jack trailed off and narrowed his eyes at Holster’s jacket. “Did you buy that? I could have—”

Holster rolled his eyes, but before he could reply they were interrupted by the door to the locker room opening.

“Zimmboni, hi! There you— Oh. You have friends.” Mashkov stopped in the doorway. It was funny to see someone who had been so aggressive on the ice half-dressed and gaping at them.

Jack chuckled. “Yeah. Yeah I do have friends. Uh, Tater, this is my team from Samwell. Everyone, this is Tater.”

Ransom was buzzing, and when Tater smiled at the group, he let out a squeak of excitement and swayed on the spot.

“Hello, Samwell!” Tater said, waving at them. “Sorry to steal away Zimmboni, but coaches want to speak. And he needs shower. Very smelly after hockey game.”

Jack huffed. “Whatever, Tater.”

“Aw, well we have to catch our train, anyway!” Bitty said. “But I brought pies for y’all because you deserve a treat after that game, and— you know what, never mind, it—”

“Pies? Yes please.” Tater took the tupperware boxes out of Bitty’s hands. “Never mind coaches and shower. I think Zimmboni’s friends can stay.”

* * *

Ransom didn’t stop talking about Tater the whole train ride back to Samwell, and for days after they were hearing about the supposed ‘moment’ he and the professional player had shared when their eyes had crossed in the corridor outside the locker room. Nobody wanted to tell him that there was a chance he had imagined Tater’s attention on him, rather than on all of Jack’s friends as a single entity, but unfortunately their silence meant he kept talking. Tango was in awe over the idea that his captain might befriend Alexei Mashkov, while Whiskey shifted uncomfortably for a bit and, when everyone else was finally quiet, asked how Jack had enjoyed his NHL debut.

* * *

On Saturday, Will prepared to enjoy a morning in bed. Derek didn’t want to kiss, but Will wrapped them in a blanket which didn’t quite cover the both of them, and they snuggled up together, sometimes talking, but mostly revelling in the silence together. It was still early, but Will had woken when they would normally get up for practice and had disturbed Derek. Derek was drained and had been unwilling to get up or get dressed. Will knew he had to keep an eye on him if his mood was dropping, but in that moment they were at peace. Derek’s eyelashes fluttered against Will’s neck every time he blinked, and their chests moved in time with each other.

A knock at the door made them both jump.

“Yo, Nursey!” Ransom’s voice called. “We need you, bro. And have you seen Dex? He’s like, disappeared.”

Will shoved the blanket under Derek’s sheets and tugged his hoodie on while Derek grabbed a nearby Semantics textbook and flicked it open to a dog-eared page.

“No he hasn’t,” Will said, swinging open the door. Ransom blinked at him. “What do you need help with?”

“Are you two… hanging out?”

“We’re studying,” Will said.

A grin spread across Ransom’s face. “Bros! I’m so proud of you. D-man bonding. Good stuff.”

“Rans,” Derek said, looking up from his textbook. “Why are you here?”

“Team trip to the Big E! Or, well… Part of a hockey team and part of a volleyball team trip to the Big E. Nursey, we’ll need your car.”

“The… agricultural fair?” Derek asked, sounding confused. “Why are we going there?”

“It's fun, Nursey, you'll enjoy it. Everyone's going! Well, except Bitty because he's run away. And Ollie and Wicky because they have work to do. And Lardo because she's got a shit ton of art to make.”

“What?”

“What do you mean Bitty’s run away?” Will asked.

Ransom shrugged. “Chowder saw him leaving with an overnight bag this morning, but didn't get to ask where he was going.”

“So, when you say everyone is going…”

“It's us four, Chowder and Farmer and March and April.”

Even though Holster wasn't there, Will figured it went without saying that he was part of the ‘four’.

“The Haus in half an hour, with the car. No excuses.”

* * *

They bought breakfast to eat on the green while they waited for the state houses to open. Derek and Chowder had never been to the Big E before, so the others tried to explain what sort of a day they would have and what was worth doing, and how each New England state owned the land that their state house was built on. Ransom organised a schedule for them on his phone. They planned to hit the state houses as soon as they were open, to avoid the worst of the crowds later on, and take their time in each of those. Then, they would do some rides and look at some of the farm animals, spend some time exploring the other buildings and spectacles, and eventually they would go to the arena for the evening concert.

They started in New Hampshire, where Ransom set the tone for the day by buying beers for everyone, except Will who said he would be driving Derek's car back later, and April who said someone should probably be fit to drive Holster's car, too.

As they made their way through each of the other states, Derek ignored all the snacks in his bag in favor of bouncing up to each of the food vendors and announcing “I'm allergic to dairy; do you have anything vegan?” That got him kettle corn in New Hampshire, and a bowl of fried mushrooms in Connecticut. He bought a pack of pumpkin seeds in Connecticut, too, and he and Will spent a while playing with the LEGO.

In Vermont, Holster ran to join a line to buy cookies, while Chowder browsed a stand of maple candy.

“Don't even think about it,” Ransom warned, when Chowder reached for a box.

Chowder froze and turned his head.

“If you have any respect for me, Chowder, you won't buy something flavored with  _ Vermont  _ maple syrup.”

Chowder stared at him as he laid a finger on the candy box. Ransom’s eyes narrowed.

Will tensed before they entered the Maine state building. Derek had already nudged him three times on the path between Vermont and Maine, and made four comments about how it felt to be going home. Part of him wanted to skip just to avoid the chirps.

“We can get pie here,” Holster said, eyeing up the vendors.

“We have pie every day,” Will said, and his chest puffed up a little when he thought of all the other foods Maine had to offer. “There’s so much else. We should start with blueberry pop, then hit the baked potato line.”

“Oh God, Poindexter,” Derek groaned. “Of course you have a plan of action for navigating Maine.”

“Baked potatoes, Nurse. Unless you want to stand around and watch the rest of us eat stuff you can’t eat?”

“Will I be able to have anything on it or am I going to have to wait for ages just to have a plain potato? I’m not eating a fucking plain potato, Poindexter.”

“Ooh! Lobster rolls!” Chowder said, grabbing onto Will’s arm and pointing. “Are they any good?”

Holster shouted at them to all ‘join this fucking line before the pie all goes’.

“It's not the Haus,” Will muttered, walking over anyway. “They won't run out this early in the day.”

“It feels like we’re cheating on Bitty’s pies,” Chowder said, through a mouthful of blueberry pie, five minutes later.

“That’s because we are,” Cait said, seriously.

“We’re terrible bros,” Ransom added, and he shovelled another forkful into his mouth.

“The absolute worst,” Will agreed.

The pie was very good, even if it didn’t  _ feel  _ the same as eating Bitty’s pies, and getting to have it with ice cream was nice, because at the Haus they rarely bothered, and even when they did bother it was Stop and Shop’s cheapest value ice cream. Nobody was going to tell Bitty they had eaten someone else’s pie, though, however much they had enjoyed it. Once the pastry was properly demolished, they moved onto lobster rolls and salmon on sticks, and blueberry pop. Will sacrificed himself to more chirps to get a lobster mac and cheese because it reminded him of childhood trips to the Big E.

They were leaving the building when Derek turned to Will and said, “I have a present for you.”

“Hmm?” Will asked. In the thick crowds of the building, they had been split up a couple of times, and Will had lost track of Derek for a bit, but he hadn’t noticed him buy anything. He didn’t have any bags.

Derek pulled something out his pocket and Will held out a hand so that he could drop it in the palm. It was a tacky beaded necklace with a red lobster pendant.

“You paid actual money for this?” Will asked, staring at it.

“Nah, it was free. I’ll put it on for you.”

“I’m not going to—” Will started to object, but Derek had already plucked it back out of his hand and was clipping it around his neck. Heat rose in Will’s cheeks, and apparently in his neck as well, judging by Derek pressing the back of his hand against his skin.

“Bros, hurry up! Massachusetts awaits,” Ransom called.

In the Massachusetts building, Derek was glad to finally get his hands on some vegan chilli, while Chowder tried some emu chilli. Will bypassed that station altogether and bought some clam chowder, immediately getting a ‘hey, don’t eat my boyfriend,” comment from Cait. Ransom made everybody who wasn’t driving try some cranberry wine, and they finished off with cider doughnuts before heading to Rhode Island for Del’s lemonade and Hot Weiners.

Full of food, but happy, chatty, and six of them well on their way to tipsy, they made their way to the fairground. There, they split up with the girls saying they didn’t want to get on rides straight away, Ransom and Holster compromising by deciding to hit kiddieland, and the Frogs braving the ferris wheel.

“Whoever throws up first has to pay for lunch,” Derek said, when they were halfway up.

“Oh no,” Chowder said, though he didn’t look as close to being sick as Derek, in Will’s opinion.

“Maybe we don’t really need lunch,” Will suggested. “We’ve already eaten a lot.”

The other two looked at him in horror.

“Why are we here, if not to eat a ridiculous amount?” Derek asked. “Anyway. This is good for you. You need the calories.”

It was debatable that Will needed his calories from fried dough and cream puffs, but he pressed his lips together as they went over the top point of the wheel.

They met up with the group, only to split up again, with March and April now going with Ransom and Holster to the rides, and Cait joining Will, Derek and Chowder at the arcade games.

“I’m going to get that shark for you,” she told Chowder at the ring toss, where there was a giant styrofoam shark as the best prize available. The others stood back to watch.

On the first go, she won a miniature teddy bear.

On the second, she won a turtle.

During her third go, Derek and Will muttered that they would catch up with them later, and wandered off to find something else to explore.

* * *

Later, Will wouldn’t be able to say what exactly they had done in those couple of hours on their own at the Big E. There was a lot of subtle flirting and daring each other to try bizarre foods and sneaking around like their lives depended on it, but by the time they bumped into March, April, Ransom and Holster at the Farm-A-Rama, they hadn’t really  _ done  _ very much. Somehow, Derek managed to answer Holster’s question of where they had been, which was strange to Will who honestly had no idea.

"So, pumpkin carving?" Will asked, gesturing at the artist they had been watching.

"We're getting ideas for Halloween," Holster explained.

"Sure. Because you're that good."

"We took pictures for Lardo."

Will snorted and looked around. "Hey, ba—" he cut himself off with a cough, and tugged on Derek's elbow. "Bro. Bees."

They stood at the hive, looking for the queen, until Ransom pulled them away with promises of how cute the baby chicks were. When they had finally seen every animal the fair had to offer, and rejected the idea of going to watch pig racing because Derek wasn't convinced about the morality of it, they went over to the craft beer pub and watched the actors from the Storrowton Village Museum walking around in 19th century clothing.

"Did we miss Dex's home?" Derek said, leaning over April's shoulder to look at her map of the fair.

"No, we went to Maine this morning," Will told him with a frown. "How much have you drunk?"

"Just this much," Derek said, holding his fingers an inch apart, even though he had already drunk more of his current beer than that, and it was his second since being at Storrowton Village. Then there was a deep fried martini earlier, and all the alcohol at the State Houses. Will bit his lip. He hadn't noticed how much alcohol had been flowing. "I don't mean Maine," Derek continued, taking another sip of beer. "We didn't go to the lobster house."

Will looked at where Derek prodded the map with his finger. "It's just another food place, Nursey. You don't eat shellfish."

"But I know you miss the lobsters. Your kin. Your ocean friends."

"I really don't," Will said, but he had to press his lips together to stop himself from laughing.

"Well, this argument is old and boring," Ransom declared. "We should find somewhere to watch the parade from."

* * *

They didn’t see Cait and Chowder again until they were at the arena to watch the concert that closed the evening. They were sat on a grassy bank, Holster, Ransom and March passing a bottle of beer between them, when Derek muttered something about ‘fucking sharks’. Will blinked at him blearily and followed the direction of his gaze to see Chowder and Cait walking towards them, hand in hand and laughing. They each carried a giant shark prize.

“Is this real or am I hallucinating?” Will asked.

“I think it must be a shared hallucination,” Derek said.

"Hi!" Chowder said, sitting down next to them. "Wow, you look tired."

Will sighed and leaned into him. "Too much food."

"Are you okay to drive?"

"Yeah. I have to be, anyway. All of you have drunk too much."

Cait reached across Chowder to pat him on the arm. "We'll get you some coffee before we leave."

"You're all going to sleep in the car, aren't you?" Will asked with a groan. Chowder could sleep anywhere at the best of times, and if Cait had the space to stretch out on the backseat with her feet in his lap, she would probably join him. Meanwhile, Derek had drunk enough that he would probably pass out before too long as well.

"Oh, well maybe," Chowder admitted, "but you can talk to the sharks!"

Will raised an eyebrow at him, unimpressed.

"How long did it take you to win those?" Holster asked.

"We just managed it before we had to come over here! We thought we were going to run out of time," Cait said.

"So... all afternoon?" Will clarified. "You didn't do anything else?"

Chowder grinned. "No, but it was fun."

"What happened to everything else you won?" asked March.

"We gave it away. Ooh, they're selling fried Oreos," Cait said. "Anyone want one?"

Will groaned at the thought of more food, but everyone else were in favor, so Derek offered help her carry them. "Why?" Will asked, swaying a little when he sat up straight. He grabbed onto Derek's arm to steady himself.

Derek laughed. "I'll get you some coffee."

* * *

Will wanted to go straight to bed when they got back to Samwell, but he had to drive via the Haus to drop Chowder and Cait off, and once they were there Ransom and Holster insisted on everybody coming in. Between Ransom's easy smile and Chowder's pleading eyes and Derek pulling him along, Will couldn't resist.

When they got back to the Haus, Lardo, Ollie and Wicky were in the den with a swimmer and a crate of beers.

“Yo. Cool. Sharks,” Lardo said.

“These two spent an obscene amount of time and money on the games,” Ransom said. “Are these beers chilled?”

“Nope.”

Holster scoffed. “You disgust me.”

Ransom went in search of cold beer, despite everyone except Will and April already being nicely buzzed. Cait produced a bottle of Vermont wine which she'd got Holster to buy at the Big E, and which she, March and the swimmer (Helen-who’s-also-an-architect-with-Wicky, they learned) passed between them and occasionally offered to the others.

"So what did you guys do today?" Will asked, because sitting with only music for noise and drinking himself into oblivion had never been his thing, even if all the others were tapping their feet to the songs, and chugging their drinks.

"Helen and I were working on a project," Wicky said, "and then we came to ask Lardo for some help with the drawing and we've been here since."

Will nodded slowly. It didn't explain why Ollie was here, too, but then he had never really questioned why Ollie and Wicky were as attached at the hip as they were. They just were.

"You should have come with us," Holster told them. "It was 'swawesome."

As Holster dove into a play-by-play of the day, Will let himself slump against Derek's side. He told himself that it was no more intimate than Ransom and Holster sharing a bed, or Ollie and Wicky sleeping on each other during roadies. Derek was leaning back enough that if anyone questioned it Will was sure they could blame it on his tiredness and Derek's tipsiness.

* * *

First the volleyball team turned up, and then a few more swimmers, and before Will knew it, their casual passing around of drinks had descended into a full-blown kegster.

Will dodged a couple of giggling freshmen and frowned at a couple of rugby players he definitely hadn't seen arrive or be invited. He saw Derek in the kitchen, rooting through a drawer full of snacks and went over to stop him from opening up anything he definitely wasn't supposed to eat. "I'm going back to the dorm. You're vegetarian."

Derek stared at the pack of turkey jerky in his hand. "Huh. I am."

Will rolled his eyes. "I'll see you tomorrow. Stay safe."

"No, I... Derek frowned at the jerky and dropped it on the side. "I'll come with you."

The walk back to the dorms seemed to take forever, possibly because of how much Will's feet were starting to ache from all the walking that day, or possibly because Derek was twenty times more clumsy when drunk.

"Hmm... you're tired," Derek said, patting Will's cheek when he had finally got him into the elevator in their building (it was a painfully slow elevator, but Will didn't want to entertain the idea of trying to get Derek up the stairs).

"Well noticed," Will said, grabbing onto Derek's hand and pulled it away from his face.

"You shoes— Shut— should," Derek slurred, dragging the word out when he finally got it right, "sleep in my own bed. No. That's not— Your bed. Sleep in your bed and I'll sleep in my own bed."

"What?" Will asked as he pulled Derek's arm over his shoulder, preparing to get him out of the elevator.

"Sleep better."

"Okay, baby."

"I mean it," Derek told him, seriously. "Sleep better without me in own bed. You're tired because — hic — because you keep sleeping with me. Haha."

Will took Derek over to his room so that he could put him to bed, and helped him get undressed. "Okay," he said, again, kissing Derek on the temple. "I'm going to put some water here for you and I'll come by when I wake up. Love you."

Derek curled up in his bed and patted around with one hand until Will picked Tigger up off the bottom of the bed and tucked him against Derek's chest. "You too, Will."

 


	6. Season Openers

The first Friday in October saw Will, Derek and Chowder lazing around in Chowder’s room, while rain streamed down the windows and the wind howled above the roof. Will was on the last problem set he needed to do before next week, and Derek lay on his front reading a chapter for one of his Literature classes. Chowder was on his bed, watching something on his laptop.

Will sighed as he turned his laptop off and put it to the side. Something about the weather outside, or the lack of anything to do for the rest of the day, made him feel sleepy, but it was too early in the day and he didn’t want to waste it. His eyes fell on Derek and he watched in fondness the way his eyebrows pinched together when he found something he didn’t understand, and the way his eyes brightened and sparkled when he read something particularly well written. Not wanting to distract him, Will turned his attention to Chowder, and frowned at the hand movements he was making at his laptop.

“Are you signing about dicks?”

Derek’s head lifted to see what Will was talking about. Chowder blinked at him. “No?”

“Yeah, you are,” Will said, getting up. He sat next to Chowder and peered over at the screen to see what he was trying to learn. “As someone who did most of their sign language learning as an eight year old hockey boy, I know my dirty words. Here.” He put his hand over Chowder’s and moulded it into the right shape. “You need to sort out your facial expressions, too. You’re concentrating too hard and that makes it look like you’re trying to be rude.”

They were signing at each other when Cait got back from volleyball practice twenty minutes later. She had a game that evening, that the three of them were going to watch, so she laid Chowder’s yoga mat out in the middle of the floor and did a couple of stretches before lying down.

“So what’s new in the volleyball world?” Derek asked as she made herself comfortable.

“Not much. We’re nearly halfway through the season, now.”

“Wild.”

“March wants Ransom to have a date with April.”

Will frowned as he tried to work out what she meant. “What?”

“Some metamour bonding thing. She thinks they don’t hang out enough. Which… I guess they only ever hang out when she’s there so she might have a point.”

“Metamour,” Will repeated. He was sure he had heard that word before, he just wasn’t sure where, or what it meant.

“They metamours, because they’re both dating March,” Derek explained. “Or at least… I don’t think Ransom’s used the word dating yet, but they’re both seeing March.”

“Huh.” It must have been in the dictionary of LGBT terms Derek had made for him the year before, but Will hadn’t paid much attention to the bits about polyamory. “That’s… I didn’t realize they…”

Derek rolled his eyes. “Of  _course_ you didn’t.”

He didn’t mean it unkindly, and Will knew better, now, than to take offence. He had just grown up distanced from anything remotely liberal, particularly when it came to sexual liberation. Sometimes his blind spots were the size of mountains to other people, because Will would never make the connection that March’s relationship with April was more than friendly when he also knew she was sleeping with Ransom.

“So when’s this date happening?” Chowder asked.

“Tomorrow, I think. Seeing as we don’t have games. March is going to hang out with Holster somewhere and my job is to get the rest of the team out the Dig so April and Ransom can have the place to themselves.”

“You could see if there’s a movie on?” Chowder suggested.

“Yeah, I was actually thinking of taking them to this open mic night at the student center? Melati does some pretty good stand-up comedy when she’s pushed, and Tessa is an awesome singer, so I can probably persuade them to take part and then the whole team will come along.”

Derek froze, and Will smirked at him. “Hey, is that the same open mic night your Foreign Poetry seminar friends want you to go to?”

“...No?”

Cait squeaked. “That’s great! Are you performing?”

“Ugh. Yes. I was going to.”

“Are you going to watch?” she asked Will.

“Probably not? I usually leave the poetry talk for him to have with his friends who know what he’s talking about. I’ve read the poem he’s going to do.”

“But if it’s slam poetry, it’s supposed to be heard. You should come! You can sit with me if you didn’t want to sit with all the English majors.”

Will hesitated and glanced at Derek. “Would you be okay with that?”

“Of course I would. I know why you don’t normally come, but I’ve never been against you hearing me.”

“Oh.”

Will felt a little embarrassed. He supposed he knew that it had always been him saying that he wouldn’t go to things like that, because of the implications of them turning up together, but in his mind he had passed some of the reasoning onto Derek maybe not wanting to perform something as intimate as his poetry in front of both Will and a room full of other people. Individually, it seemed okay.

The sound of Holster entering the kitchen downstairs and shouting, ‘pie!' as if it was a surprise that there was pie, and it wasn’t the case that they had pie every day gave Will an out.

“We should go and get some pie before Holster eats it all.”

The pie was already half gone, even though when they had arrived at the Haus Bitty had warned them not to touch it yet because it was hot out of the oven. Ransom and Holster were wiping filling from around their mouths. Empty plates sat in front of them.

“Yo,” Derek greeted them, stepping around Ollie, who was tying Wicky’s tie, to grab some plates.

“What’s with the suit?” Cait asked.

“Date,” Wicky replied gruffly. Will opened his mouth to ask who his date was with, but Wicky carried on talking. “I look stupid. I was fine in the polo shirt and jeans.”

“You look hot,” Ollie replied. “Tell him he looks hot.” He looked around the room for support, his eyes falling on Will, but Will felt a lump in his throat. He couldn’t say that, could he? Not without admitting he was attracted to guys and that yes, Wicky looked  _amazing_ in a suit (and so did Ollie — they had a double date, maybe?) because their fucking hockey team was too fucking attractive and his ass was nicely accentuated by the suit pants, and the tie was definitely a thing for Will and now he was thinking of Derek in his game day suit and—  _Fuck._

“Smoking,” Cait agreed.

“Hey!” Chowder objected.

Cait raised an eyebrow at him. “I’d say the same for you, if you ever wore a suit without a Sharks hoodie underneath.”

Chowder pouted. “You look great,” he told Wicky.

Will just shovelled pie into his mouth and tried not to think about the way his body was reacting to the thought of Derek in a suit. He resigned himself to staying sat at the Haus kitchen table for a while.

* * *

They were back at the Haus the next morning to witness Bitty’s attempt to teach Ransom how to cook for April, and asked Holster about what his plans for the day were.

“I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “She’s taking me out, not the other way around.”

Bitty’s eyes were in his hairline when he turned to check Ransom wasn’t burning the pancakes.

“It’s nice that you’re making friends with the volleyball team,” Bitty said. “You’re both having dates with March and April today?”

“Yeah!” Holster said. “Hey, Rans, you should put sriracha in the pancake batter.”

“No, honey, don’t do that.”

The front door opened and Tango leaned in, as if uncertain if he was allowed to come in. “I heard you guys were making brunch? Or something?”

Tango was led to a seat and handed a plate to wait for the next pancake to be ready.

Ollie and Wicky turned up not long after and waved off questions about the date. All Wicky would say was that it went well. Will wondered if it was Helen, but everyone was distracted from their inquisition when Vizzy arrived, dragged along by a girl.

“Hi, I’m Andrea,” she said, holding a hand out to Holster who was closest to her. “I’m Mark’s girlfriend and I finally persuaded him to let me meet you.”

The room was a flurry of movement as everyone tried to introduce themselves to her, and chirp Vizzy and fine him. Chowder slapped him on the shoulder, and he grinned.

“Wow, so many of the team are starting to date,” Bitty said. Will felt himself tense up at the comment, but Bitty shook his head and was already turning back to Ransom to give him more instructions, now to practise whatever he had decided he wanted to cook for April.

Tango looked down at his empty plate. “That was really good. Do you cook a lot or something?”

* * *

That evening, Chowder insisted on coming to the open mic night as well, because he felt left out over the prospect of Will, Derek and Caitlin all being there without him. He and Will sat with the volleyball team, who were more than happy to include them on their jokes and conversations. One of the freshman bought Will a soda, blushing furiously as she did. Will smiled politely at her and asked what she wanted to major in, but when one of the other girls made a point of trying to set them up, he apologized.

“I’m, uh. I’m actually seeing someone at the moment,” he said, and his eyes flickered over towards the table where Derek was helping one of his English friends finish a poem before their time at the mic.

“You are?” Melati asked. Of all the volleyball girls, she was closest to Caitlin after March and April, and had met Will a few times at kegsters.

“It’s complicated,” he replied with a tight smile. He was grateful that the volleyball team were less pushy than the hockey team and let it drop without another word.

“Next up, performing spoken word poetry is Derek Nurse!” the MC announced. Chowder and Will let out an uproarious cheer.

* * *

Will walked back to his dorm with Derek, only chirping him a little bit for the copious tree imagery in his poem. At their doors, he kissed Derek goodnight. “Is it okay if we sleep in our own rooms tonight?” He felt awkward asking, worried that Derek would take it the wrong way. Will didn’t want him to think he didn’t want to spend time with him, just that it was never very comfortable when they shared a bed and he wanted a decent night’s sleep.

Fortunately, Derek didn’t look offended. He kissed Will’s cheek and smiled. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I just— not feeling it tonight. That whole intimacy thing,” he said, screwing his face up. Will knew it must have been a strange evening for him, reading poetry dedicated to Will and listening to other songs and poems and comedy routines all about sex, if that’s how he felt.

Will squeezed his hand. “Okay. See you in the morning.”

“Yeah. Goodnight, Will.”

Will had just changed into his pyjamas when his phone beeped with a notification. He smiled as he picked up his toothbrush and toothpaste to take down to the communal bathroom. It was probably Derek saying goodnight again.

It wasn’t until he was getting into bed that his phone went off again, this time with an email alert, and Will remembered that he hadn’t checked Derek’s text. He reached out blindly for his phone and rolled onto his side to look at it. He had a few unread emails that had been building up over the course of the open mic night, but no message from Derek. Instead, he had a string of texts from Dan.

 

> **Daniel**  
>    
>  Hey  
>  Have you decided what you’re doing for Thanksgiving?  
>  Haley’s friend is staying with us and I think you should meet her.  
>  She’d be great for you  
> 

 

Will stared at the messages, feeling sick. He didn’t know what Dan’s angle here was — whether he was being willfully ignorant and pretending that Will didn’t have a boyfriend, or whether he was simply hoping Will would change his mind, but either way he couldn’t believe that he would try this. He deleted the thread without replying and switched over to his emails in the hope there was something that would take his mind off Dan. He spent an hour going through  the spreadsheet of things which needed fixing in the Haus that Ransom had sent him, mentally answering the questions of how best to tackle them, and writing up a list of what order he wanted to look at things in.

* * *

The next day, Will took his toolbox to the Haus so that he could attempt to fix the tumble dryer. If they were insistent on trying to fix it, he didn’t see the point in letting them hire somebody when he could look at it himself for free and he needed to be doing something with his hands to stop his mind from wandering back to Dan’s texts.

“How’s it going down there, Dex?” Bitty called down the basement stairs after Will had been working for half an hour.

“Fine,” he said in a strained voice, trying not to lose focus. “Bitty, you should really talk to Rans and Holster about new Haus appliances.” It was possible to patch it up for the moment, but he had no doubt that soon the dryer would need replacing completely. He frowned at the wires and pulled a piece of tape off one of them, mumbling to himself, “Geez is that Duct tape?” He reached blindly for his tool box so that he could patch the wire up with some proper electrical tape until he had bought a replacement.

Derek was there when Will finally made it up to the kitchen, squinting at a freshly-baked pumpkin pie as if he could divine whether it was something he could eat without asking Bitty or checking the can the filling came from. Bitty cut a slice for Will, ignoring Derek in a way that made Will suggest Derek definitely  _couldn’t_ eat the pumpkin pie. He normally couldn’t.

“Thank you so much, Dex! Everyone’s been avoiding laundry for weeks and–how do I put this–it’s starting to affect the general ambiance,” Bitty said, patting Dex’s shoulder as he placed the pie in front of him.

“Why do you fix stuff if you hate it so much?” Derek asked.

“Because when something’s broken, you fix it,” Will told him. He frowned as he tried to work out why Derek thought he hated it. He had figured that from all the chirping he got for having his tool box with him at Samwell, Derek had realized that he did actually enjoy DIY. “Also? I don’t hate it.”

“Well, you did have a pretty big scowl on your face when you came up the stairs,” Bitty said. Derek clicked his tongue against his teeth in agreement.

“I was actually very happy I got the dryer to work. I guess I was confused as to how I got it to work. It’s so beat up. Like, did you guys use to throw kegsters in the basement?” Will asked.

“It’s okay if it’s for Dibs, Poindexter,” said Derek. Will squinted at him. Was he really bringing Dibs up now?

“It’s not.”

Derek walked out the room, a piece of pie in hand. “I mean, seriously, we all do stuff for Dibs. Thanks, Bitty!”

“You can’t eat that!” Bitty shouted after him, but Derek had already disappeared. “What the— Does he want to die?”

“I’m on it,” Will said with a sigh, and pushed himself up to follow. He ran after Derek and grabbed onto his arm when he caught up with him on the porch. “What’s up with you?” he asked, taking the pie out of Derek’s hand. Luckily, he gave it up without a fight.

“Nothing,” Derek said.

“Seriously? It’s not about Dibs.”

“Sure it isn’t.”

“Derek...”

“Look, you don’t have to lie, okay? It’s okay. I’ve been doing stuff for Dibs, too, but when you get all scowly and say that you’re not doing it for Dibs, it’s worse because then what about when everyone takes you at your word and decide to give Dibs to other people because they’ve been working for it and admitting that’s what it’s for?”

Will stared at Derek. He didn’t want to think about Dibs, or about what would happen if he didn’t get them at the end of the year, but he would fix the Haus up anyway, even if they weren’t on the line. He couldn’t say that they were for Dibs when he would be doing it anyway, but he didn’t know what else he could do. “It’s not for Dibs,” he insisted. “And you can’t eat this,” he added, holding the pie up.

“Such a spoilsport,” Derek muttered. “Can’t a bro sometimes want to try pumpkin pie?”

“No.”

“But everyone else is always going on about how good it is.”

“No, Derek.”

“It won’t be  _that_ bad. An antihistamine, maybe a shot of adrenaline, a quick trip to the hospital just to check everything’s a-okay, and I’ll be back for dinner!”

Will arched an eyebrow at him. He really  _shouldn’t_ be this invested in trying pumpkin pie. “No.”

“Hi guys! What are you talking about?”

They turned their heads to Tango. “Hey, Tango, eat this,” Will said, shoving the pie in his direction.

“Thanks, Dex!” Tango carried on through the front door, mumbling, “Oh wow, this is amazing,” through a mouthful of pie. Derek gestured after him frantically and pulled puppy dog eyes at Will.

“It’s really not that worth it,” Will told him.

“I live my life free of risks and it’s so fucking boring,” Derek complained.

“I just saved your life.”

“Boring. Chowder says its one of his favorites.”

“Chowder has a new favorite pie every week,” Will pointed out. “And he also likes to have a glass of milk with his pie, which I also very much do not recommend you trying.”

“It’s not my fault that Chowder is an icon and I want to be him.”

Will rolled his eyes.

“Hey, have you thought about his birthday yet? What are you getting him?”

“Um.” Will bit his lip. He had less than a week to get something, but he had been struggling to find the perfect present. “Still working it. What are you— no, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.”

“Because you know that my present for Chowder is going to be better than yours,” Derek said smugly.

Will rolled his eyes. “Of course it will be. Your budget for birthday presents is, like, fifty dollars higher than mine.”

Derek shrugged. “Yeah but money doesn’t buy happiness.”

“It does, however, buy a lot more stuff.”

“Not necessarily better.”

Will clicked his tongue in annoyance. “Fine. Why don’t we both have a budget of fifteen dollars and you can see how easy it is to buy for Chowder’s birthday.”

Derek seemed to consider it for a moment. “I already bought his gift, though,” he said. “And it was a lot more than— Wait. Your budget is only  _Fifteen_ dollars?”

Will stared back at him.

“Fifteen, not fifty?” Derek clarified.

“Why on Earth would I be spending fifty dollars on someone’s birthday when I have to plan a meal out into my budget two weeks in advance?”

“Because you said my budget is fifty dollars higher than yours.”

“I— Oh my  _God.”_ Will tried to imagine a life where someone could casually drop a hundred dollars on a birthday. “I knew my birthday you must have gone over fifty, but— How much—?”

“I spent the same on you as I’m spending on Chowder,” Derek said. “Even though with someone else I might have given myself a higher budget for you as my boyfriend. Because I knew you’d find it too much. But I’m still not giving you exact figures.”

“Jesus. I— I can’t talk about this,” Will said, feeling overwhelmed almost to the point of nausea. He could never compete with Derek for extravagent gifts, and he would certainly not be able to fully pay him back and give him the birthday he deserved when it came around. “Let’s just go back inside.  _A hundred dollars._ Fucking hell.”

“You could buy him a Snuggie,” Derek said. “That was fifteen dollars.”

Will bit back a snappy response. He knew that Derek was only trying to help. “Fifteen is actually higher than I normally go. It’s like… Ten is the budget, but if I see something a bit more that looks perfect I don’t mind stretching as far as fifteen.”

“Oh.”

They went back into the kitchen where Bitty promised to make Derek some cupcakes, and Will brought the list of jobs back up on his phone, glad to have a reason to end the conversation. There was the broken window pane in Lardo’s room, and the faulty exhaust fan in Bitty, Ransom and Holster’s bathroom; the wobbly bannister, and the dodgy wiring for the kegster lights, but Will was reluctant to do any of them before checking the porch because sometimes it felt like it was going to give under his feet and that was more dangerous than any of the things Ransom and Holster had identified as needing doing.

“Dex?” Derek asked.

Will hummed.

“I asked if you wanted to come to Annie’s with Chowder and me.”

“Oh. No. I have a lot to do here.”

“But Frogs bro time!”

Will bit his lip. He wanted to spend time with Derek and Chowder because they were his favorite people in the world and he loved being with them and he especially didn’t like leaving things on an awkward note with Derek, but if they went to Annie’s they would be  _talking_ and Will wouldn’t be able to keep Dan off his mind, and one of them would notice that Will was distracted so they would ask him why and then he would have to tell them. He would have to look Derek in the eye and tell him that his brother was trying to find him a girlfriend to replace Derek. He would have to admit that his family really were just as bad as the hockey team had all thought he was last year. He couldn’t do it.

“Another time,” he said. “Bits said he might need help doing some baking for the Falcs’ first game.”

* * *

The porch turned out to be a lot sturdier than it looked, so Will bumped it down his priority list as something that just needed a sanding down and a repaint and went to make a batch of cookies for Bitty. Most of the team gathered in the den to watch the game with food on their laps and chips to pass around and enough cans of beer that they wouldn’t run out. Shitty turned up and it was like he had never left with the way he stripped and kicked his feet up on Lardo’s lap. A beer appeared in his hand before Will could offer him one, and then he was shouting at the television, and encouraging everybody to do the same.

Jack was chosen for a pre-match interview, but it was hard to hear most of it over the running commentary and general excitement in the Haus. They watched tensely as a clip of the Frozen Four championship was shown, cheering when Jack scored a goal, but groaning when Providence pulled ahead of Samwell. The Falconers, of course, were milking every second of it as the home team of the victors, but the new franchise being able to call Jack Zimmermann one of their players.

Though he was helping Bitty to feed everyone, Will sat on the arm of Derek’s chair just in time to see the puck drop. It was exciting to watch Jack play, knowing that only a short few months ago they had been on the ice together.

“Bitty, you’re not tweeting!” Chowder said, about halfway through the first period.

“Bro,” Ransom said with a frown, “you know that when we said be careful what you put on social media, we weren’t saying you couldn’t tweet at all. You can tweet about Jack’s game.”

“Yeah, it’s not like there’s much you can say about that which would risk outing someone,” Holster agreed.

Bitty’s face twisted. “It’s just a tense game. Too tense to tweet,” he said.

It wasn’t actually that tense when you took the Falconers as a team, but Bitty was clearly focused on Jack. They all wanted Jack to do well.

Halfway through the second period, Jack scored. It wasn’t the most spectacular goal ever, and Will had definitely seen Jack do better in NCAA, but this was the NHL, and it was his first goal in the first game of the regular season and, surrounded by his teammates, it was difficult not to get swept up in the celebrations. It was nearly half an hour later that the group to settled down, and that was only because Holster snapped at them to listen to Tater’s intermission interview.

* * *

Chowder’s birthday was the Sunday, so Will and Derek left it late into the morning before either of them texted him. Derek had suggested that they just turn up to the Haus, but the last thing Will wanted to do was risk walking in on Chowder and Caitlin having the morning birthday sex that Chowder had advocated for before.

Surprisingly, the Haus didn’t smell of pie when they walked in, but the sound of Chowder’s laugh drifted from the kitchen.

“Hi,” Derek said, dropping into the seat between Chowder and Holster. “Happy birthday.”

“Thanks, Nursey!”

“No Bits?”

“Oh, no,” Chowder said in a strained voice, as if he were disappointed but trying to pretend not to be. “He warned me a couple of weeks ago that he was going to be away this weekend. Something about a friend? Or a cousin or something, and this being the only weekend they could see each other.”

Will picked up a bowl and started digging through cabinets for ingredients.

“What are you doing?” Lardo asked.

“Making waffles,” he said with a shrug. He turned to Chowder with a grin. “Happy birthday.”

He smiled back. “Thanks, Dex. You don’t have to, though! Bitty did say he would make me a pie when he gets back later, so it’s not like you need to feel bad that he’s not making me breakfast or anything.”

“I know they won’t be as good as Bitty’s,” Will said with a shake of his head, “But I’m still going to make you waffles.”

“And you  _will_ eat them,” Derek said in an onimous voice.

Will threw the empty box for the waffle iron at him before he turned back to Chowder. “Where’s Cait?”

“Practice. They’ve got a game this afternoon.”

“Can I help measure out the flour?” Derek asked.

“Nope,” Will replied. He was already scooping cups of flour into the mixing bowl, and he didn’t want Bitty to come back to a kitchen covered in flour.

Derek huffed, but he didn’t sound too surprised or disappointed when he asked Chowder, “So what are our plans today?”

“Uh. Waffles, I guess? And I want to nap with Cait and go to her game. And hopefully when that’s finished Bitty will be home and we can have pie!”

“But, C. Is there anything  _different_ to normal that you want to do that we can do today because today is your birthday?”

Chowder frowned. “That already sounds like a full day, Nursey.”

“What about when Cait is doing pre-game things with the volleyball girls before its the start of the game?”

“Oh, um. I don’t know!”

Will poured batter into the waffle iron as Chowder hummed and harred about whether there was anything special he wanted them to do.

“Food!” Derek said. “We have to get food at some point. Dex and I will treat you.”

Will raised an eyebrow.

“Or I’ll treat you,” Derek amended. “Because Dex is already treating you to breakfast.”

Even though Will knew he had already spent a lot on Chowder’s birthday and hadn’t factored lunch into his budget, he still resented the implication that he  _couldn’t_ pay for lunch. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t—”

“I guess I have wanted to try that new place the other side of the science buildings for a while. Thanks Nursey. And Dex, for the waffles.”

“We’ve got presents for you, as well, you know,” Will said, grinning as he served the first waffle up in front of Chowder.

* * *

Chowder opened the presents after breakfast. He cooed in delight over the Winter hat, gloves and scarf set that Will had bought him — not official Sharks merch, but they  _were_ black and a blue color that was almost teal — and spent a while squishing Derek’s present in an attempt to work out what it was through the paper.

“Did you get me a Snuggie to match Dex’s?” he asked.

Derek just grinned widely, his eyes fixed on the hat Will had bought like he had heard the funniest inside joke ever. “Maybe next year,” he said.

Chowder frowned in confusion and ripped the paper off. A Winter jacket fell into his hands and when Chowder held it up, the Sharks logo was visible.

“Nursey!”

“Dex and I obviously had the same thoughts about how underprepared for a New England Winter you were last year.”

Chowder looked between them with shining eyes. “Did you two plan this?”

Will glanced at Derek, even though he hadn’t mentioned what he was buying for Chowder, so he didn’t know how Derek would have found out if it was planned. Derek looked back at him, a soft smile on his face, and both of them shook their heads.

“Honestly just a coincidence.”

“I love it all,” Chowder said. He wrapped the scarf around his neck, pulled the hat onto his head and reached out for the coat.

“Uh… C?” Derek asked in confusion.

“I’m wearing your gifts.”

“Are we going somewhere?”

Chowder zipped the coat up and put on the gloves. “No. I’m just wearing my birthday presents.” He grinned at them. “I’m so warm. I’m not going to be cold at  _all_ this Winter.”

“We’re inside,” Will pointed out, but Chowder didn’t seem to hear him.

“I have the best friends ever.”

* * *

When Cait got back from practice, Derek and Will stayed in the den to play Mario Kart and let Chowder and Cait retreat upstairs for some privacy.

“So,” Derek said, releasing a blue shell.

“You  _fucker,”_ Will groaned as Daisy span on the spot from the shell. Rosalina sped past.

“Love you, too. Don’t interrupt me.”

“We’re in the middle of a race.”

“I was  _about_ to get all soppy about how this is kind of our anniversary. Or our friend-iversary. Or our being-civil-to-each-other-versary.”

“What a year,” Will muttered, tongue between his teeth as he got into Mario’s slipstream. “Except it’s none of those.”

“It  _is.”_ Derek groaned in frustration when Rosalina was hit by a lightning bolt.

“It was Chowder’s birthday that we had our first proper in-depth talk about feelings, if you don’t count conversations about sexuality, but it wasn’t when we decided to carry on having cuddle sessions with each other, and it wasn’t when we were first civil to each other, and it was earlier than when I first told you I love you or when we actually got together.”

“But it’s when we became  _friends._ And it was a big deal for us, you know, getting each other.”

“You better not have bought me an anniversary present for today,” Will said. He couldn’t think of any other reasons why Derek might have started this conversation.

“No, I was just thinking maybe we should up the celebrations a bit. Cocktails at lunch, maybe.”

“We’re all still underage. Even if Chowder’s old now.”

“I have a fake—”

Will levelled a stern look at Derek. They weren’t getting alcohol on a fake ID. He didn’t want to risk them getting in trouble. He had to navigate back to the track when he looked back to the screen, because Daisy had strayed onto grass.

“Ugh. Mocktails, then.”

“Why, to mark the day we agreed we shouldn’t fight if it was going to upset Chowder?”

“Ch’yeah.”

Will sighed as he crossed the finish line of the race three places behind Derek. “Can we just celebrate Chowder’s birthday today, and celebrate one anniversary for us in December like a normal couple?”

“That sounds incredibly boring. And how do we know it should be in December?”

Will frowned at the TV as it played out the leaderboard animations. “Because that’s when we decided to really try at  _us_ and said that we would be exclusive.”

“Okay,” Derek said with a long-suffering sigh. “I  _guess_ we can celebrate our anniversary in December.”

Will rolled his eyes. “Great.”

“Sound a bit less enthusiastic, babe, someone might think you like being with me or something.”

Will dug his fingers into his legs, and a tension ran through his shoulders. He needed to chill out before somebody overheard and worked out what was going on, and he didn’t particularly wish to carry the conversation on. “Today’s Chowder’s day,” he said, with as much finality as he could muster.

Derek nodded. “Okay. Chowder’s day.”

“And as he’s both of our favorite person so we have to make it the best day ever for him.”

“Right! So you agree with me, that we can’t let it just be a boring day that he might have  _any_ Sunday that Cait has a game and we don’t. We need a plan. What do you think we should do? Not the aquarium again, obviously. Maybe we can find somewhere to go after the game. Where’s open late?  _Ooh,_ we should go to a planetarium!”

“What?” Will asked. Chowder’s plan for the day seemed reasonable to him, he just wanted to make it feel special despite being low-key. “No, didn’t you learn anything from my birthday? It can be the best day while still just doing the things he wants to do.”

Derek hummed. “I mean. I know. He just deserves something special.”

“He does, but he doesn’t want to miss Cait’s game, and there’s not much time before and the two of them will probably want a low-key evening post-game. Especially if Bitty’s back by then and he’s got his pie to eat. Let him do what he wants to do.”

Derek rested his chin on Will’s shoulder to pout at him. “But I want to do something fun. When do we get to do something I want to do?”

“Your birthday,” Will suggested. When Derek’s bottom lip stuck out further, he couldn’t resist dipping his head and catching it between his own.

“That’s so far,” Derek said, but there was no bite in his voice, and he pressed into the kiss. “Don’t tell me what we’re going to do. I want it to be a surprise.”

“At this point it would be a surprise to me, too. Your birthday is in  _four months.”_

“And you haven’t started planning it yet?”

“You can’t tell me you started planning my birthday in April.”

Will knew from the look on Derek’s face that he was right, and Derek just didn’t want to admit it.

“So,” Derek said, rather than answering, “I thought you were going to fight me for Chowder for my favorite person. Did you change your mind?”

“No fighting on Chowder’s birthday. That’s what he asked for last year. I’ll let him be your favorite person for today.”

“Just for today?”

“Just for today,” Will repeated with a nod.

Derek looked thoughtful for a second. “Okay. I still have to be your favorite person, though. I don’t want to be second place.”

“Stop it,” Will hit Derek in the arm and they tussled on the couch.

“Say I’m your favorite.”

“Nope. It’s definitely Chowder.”

Derek huffed dramatically and tackled Will. They rolled off the couch and landed on the floor with a bump.

“Oh my God, are you kidding?” Will asked, more amused than anything that Derek had managed to make them fall off the couch.

“Say it, say it, say it.”

“Never!”

Derek pinched Will’s ear, and he squirmed away, finding the sensation ticklish. Will accidentally kicked Derek’s ankle on reflex.

“Oof. Are you fucking ticklish on your  _ears?”_

“Shut up. No. Chowder’s my favorite.”

They rolled over a couple of times, until Derek had Will pinned to the floor by the wrists. That was the scene that Bitty walked into.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Who left you two  _alone?_ Scrapping around in my Haus like animals. Are you not able to go three minutes together without fighting?”

“Chowder’s napping with Cait,” Will said, breathlessly. There was a spot on Derek’s neck which was looking particularly kissable, so Will forced his eyes onto Bitty so that he couldn’t think about it.

“Hey, Bits, where’ve you been?” Derek asked, not bothering to get up or let go of Will.

“Mind your own damn business, Derek Malik Nurse, and get off the poor boy! Honestly.”

Sheepishly, the two stood up and brushed their clothes down.

“Seriously, though, Bits, we didn’t realize you were going to be missing half of Chowder’s birthday. Why—”

“It’s none of your business either, William. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a birthday pie to bake.”

Derek and Will exchanged a look. Bitty seemed too angry and harried for it to only be a reaction to seeing them fighting, but his avoidance as to why he had gone away for the weekend was odd, too.

* * *

October continued with preseason heating up, and the NHL entering regular season. They watched the Falconers’ games on the television or streams whenever they could, but were too busy themselves to think about going to any more games in Providence, which Will appreciated because he didn’t want to expect Jack to keep buying them tickets and he definitely couldn’t afford them himself.

When the preseason poll came out, Samwell only just made the top fifteenth, and were much lower than they might hope as Championship runners-up the season before, but Ransom and Holster stayed encouraging, put on a more upbeat locker room playlist, and morale was high as regular season approached.

With that, came Haze-a-palooza, and the Frogs were assigned Whiskey to kidnap. They made their way to the dorm building Chowder had lived in the year before, all the while commenting on how strange it was to be back there, and navigated their way to the room Lardo said was Whiskey’s.

“Chowder, you knock and when he opens the door I’ll throw the bag over his head,” Derek instructed when they were in the hallway outside his room.

“What the fuck?” Will hissed. “We can’t just ambush him.”

“It’s hazing,” Derek pointed out. “We were ambushed.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s right,” Chowder said. Will shot him a grateful look.

“Right. Hazing is illegal and if we’re going to do Haze-a-palooza right then we have to make sure there are boundaries.” Without waiting for either of the other two to respond, Will tapped on Whiskey’s door. After a few long moments, it cracked open and Whiskey stared at them through the small gap.

“Um… hi? What are you guys doing here?”

“We’re here to take you to Haze-a-palooza,” Will told him. “We’re supposed to blindfold you.”

The door opened a crack more, but Whiskey was frowning. “Do I have to go?”

“Yes,” Derek said.

Will felt back with his foot and pressed down on Derek’s toes. “No. You never have to do anything you don’t want to on this team. But it’s just a fun team activity. That happens to be in the middle of the night. It’s good for team unity.”

Whiskey stared at the cloth bag hanging from Nursey’s hands. “Okay.”

* * *

Ransom pulled Whiskey aside when the frogs arrived with him (later than anyone else), so Will and Derek helped themselves to a beer and huddled next to Ollie and Wicky.

“He didn’t come easily, then?” Ollie asked.

“We just… took our time,” Will said with a shrug.

“Kilo was so easy,” Wicky told him. “He didn’t say a word and we didn’t have to try and drag him along or anything.”

Will stared at a spot on the ice in the distance, thinking of what it had been like a year before when Ransom and Holster had accosted him in the library. He hadn’t been in the best mood in the first place, and the way they had caught him by surprise. The next day, it hadn’t seemed so bad, and he knew that they had reassured him every step of the way. It wasn’t real hazing. But something about seeing the younger students made him uncomfortable to give them the same treatment.

He cast his eyes around at the tadpoles, who Ransom and Holster were now lining up to take shots. Whiskey was eyeing the drinks up with an air of anxiety, but he wasn’t saying anything against drinking. Will approached him, under the guise of getting himself a cup of water.

“Hey,” he said, eyeing Whiskey up.

“Hi.”

“If you don’t want to drink, just say the word.”

Whiskey didn’t say anything, but Will didn’t think that was a no. Most people he knew would say that they were okay, that they wanted to drink. Whiskey just looked uncomfortable by the whole thing. Will stepped closer and lowered his voice. “I promise, nobody will think badly of you,” he said, “but if you don’t want them to know, we can do a swap and I won’t tell anyone except for Ransom and Holster just to make sure they don’t put you in a position where you feel you have to drink.” Shaking fingers closed around Will’s cup of water, and Whiskey gave his vodka up easily when Will reached out for it.

“Thank-you,” Whiskey muttered.

“Yeah.”

Will stepped away and went over to Ransom. “Hey.”

Ransom grinned at him. “Okay, bro?”

“Uh. Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“Don’t make Whiskey drink.”

Ransom frowned at him, and then at Whiskey, who still looked uncomfortable next to Tango throwing back a cupful of liquor. “He doesn’t have to.”

“Yeah, I told him that. But I don’t think he believes that anyone else agrees with me. I gave him water.”

“Okay, good, I— Shit, does he actually think we’d make him drink?”

Will stared at him until Ransom’s eyes widened and he nodded. “Shit, of course he does. Well, fuck. Thanks for having the team’s back better than me, Dex.”

“No,” Will argued. “No, we all know you’ve got our backs. There’s just a lot to do as captains. You can’t keep your eyes on all five tadpoles and try and figure out when one of them’s feeling uncomfortable but doesn’t want to say. I think I only noticed because I—” He trailed off and took a sip of vodka in an attempt to cover up the fact that he had stopped talking mid-sentence.

“Yeah,” Ransom said. He looked at Will with curiosity, but thankfully didn’t say anything. The last thing Will wanted was to make them feel guilty over him not being comfy last year.

“Okay!” Holster shouted. “Rans get over here! Time to get this show on the road.”

The tadpoles were put through the usual trials and tests, and constantly handed more drink. Whiskey got more and more relaxed as both Ransom and Holster handed him another cup of water instead of alcohol, and then he was given his chance to shine on the ice against a team of people well on their way to getting drunk. Will was tying a blindfold onto Whiskey to take him back to the Haus when he realized that Ransom and Holster hadn’t asked the tadpoles to strip down to their underwear, like the frogs had to the year before. He glanced over at Chowder who was picking a cookie out of the tupperware box Bitty had brought with him. Last year, Will hadn’t known about Chowder being trans, and he had been too drunk at Haze-a-palooza to notice then, but he now knew that was when Derek had found out. He wondered how much that had to do with stripping no longer being a part of hazing.

“Dex?” Whiskey said, when they were out of Faber.

“Yeah?”

“I wanted to— Can anyone else hear me?” He was speaking so quietly that Will had to lean closer to catch the words, but Will still glanced around to check.

“No, it’s just us.”

“Okay. I just— I wanted to say thank-you. I don’t know what you said to Ransom and Holster but—”

“All I said was that you’d rather not drink. They wouldn’t make you. Ever. Letting people set their own boundaries and care for their bodies how they want is so important.”

Whiskey nodded. “Thank-you. My vovô—” He bit his lip. “I mean… my grandpa. Was an alcoholic, I guess. I didn’t really understand it then. I never drunk in high school because of hockey, but I worry sometimes? What might happen if I started?”

Will gave his shoulder a light squeeze. “That’s valid. Thanks for trusting me. I won’t tell anyone.”

“Thanks.”

* * *

Groups of non-Haus residents were put in charge of ensuring each of the tadpoles got back to their dorms safely after Bitty had declared it time everybody got out of the Haus and got some sleep. Ransom and Holster chirped that they would see everyone bright and early in the morning, even though everyone except for the tadpoles knew that they had already set their practice to be after classes instead of before. Will and Derek walked Whiskey back to his dorm on the way to their own.

“So. Family weekend a week on Saturday,” Derek said after they had wished Whiskey a good night. Will hummed in acknowledgement. “You’ll come to lunch with us again?”

Will bit his lip. “Chowder’s dad will be here. So... it would just be me this time.”

“I know.”

“I couldn’t—”

“Will. I’m asking.”

Will frowned at the door to his room. “It would feel like I was intruding.”

“You wouldn’t be. I invited you.” Derek took Will’s key out of his hand and opened the door. “Would you feel better if we asked Chowder if we can have lunch all together, with him and his dad, too?”

“I... don’t know,” Will admitted. “Maybe? Then it’s more like last year.”

Derek already had his phone in his hand. “Okay.”

 

> **Frog Group Chat**  
>    
>  **Nursey**  
>  Yo, C, family weekend frogs lunch date with the parents yes?  
>  **Chowder**  
>  Is Cait invited?  
> 

Derek looked at Will and arched an eyebrow.

> **Dex**  
>  Obviously  
> 

 

“It’s not—” Derek started, but Will shook his head. This was  _different._

“I mean, yeah it means someone else who wasn’t there last year and I guess it’s sort of... double meeting-the-parents date. But it’s also not and it would be weird if Cait wasn’t there.”

He closed his eyes when Derek leaned across to kiss his forehead. It would be okay.

* * *

Two days later, the team walked to Kotter together for the Samwell Athletics Fans Appreciation Day. As they looked for a decent spot to claim, Tango asked how this worked, and how they were supposed to know where to go.

“Last year we went by the soccer team,” Chowder explained. “But it kind of depends on where there’s space.”

“You can see which teams are chill and which teams hate each other,” Derek elaborated. “Lax is hanging out near the cafe since they suck.”

Sure enough, the lacrosse team were on the edge of the room, with not many others nearby.

Chowder looked around the room. “I have a friend on the lacrosse team. He’s in my Chinese class.”

Will and Derek exchanged a glance and rolled their eyes. “No, Tangs,” Derek said. “Every lax bro sucks.”

“Yup,” Will agreed. He might not know all of them, so it probably wasn’t a hundred percent true, but he had shared a writing seminar with a few of them the year before and had overheard some conversations which he didn’t much care for. He had grown so used to the Samwell Men’s Hockey team’s watered down version of jock, that he had almost forgotten how bad jock conversations could be, so steeped in toxic masculinity and casual homophobia. The LAX bros gave him an unwanted reminder.

“Wow, they’re really good at this,” Chowder said, looking over at where Ransom and Holster were talking to the other Samwell team captains. They definitely had a natural flair for it that Jack never did, but Will wasn’t particularly surprised by that.

Cait broke away from the volleyball team to come and say hi to them, and she introduced them to a fellow Psychology major who plays golf.

“Sammie’s organizing the big Samwell LGBT Athletes party weekend after next.”

“Oh, cool!” Chowder said.

“‘Swawesome,” Derek added with a nod.

Will buried his hands in his pockets. “We have games then.”

Sammie gave him a bemused smile. “Sure. I mean, we couldn’t ever organize it around everybody’s schedules. If a couple of teams can’t make it, there’s always next time! Or you could drop in as an after-party.”

“You know, I’ve never got into the Samwell LGBT Athletes things,” Derek said. “Do you get a lot of people involved?”

“Oh, yeah! It’s great. Not everybody comes to everything, but we’ve always got a good turnout no matter what it is. You should come along sometime. We’ve got a lot of the women’s hockey players who come, but none of your lot.”

Derek hummed. “Maybe,” he said, and his face was devoid of anxiety or uncertainty. Will took a deep breath and excused himself for the bathroom.

Once he had splashed water over his face, managed his breathing and returned to the atrium, the athletes had split up into teams, each crowded around their tables. Someone was in the middle of taking roll call, and Will had to duck his head and sneak around the edge of the room to get to the hockey table.

“You okay?” Derek asked out the corner of his mouth.

“Yeah. I was just taking a leak.”

Derek kept his eyes on Will for much longer than he would if he actually believed that he was okay, but he nodded and turned back to the trickle of fans starting to come into the room. He hated events like this, and the whole team knew it, so hopefully they would think that was the only reason for his awkwardness.

“Remind me why we have to do this?” he asked Chowder after they had both signed the jersey of a girl looking to get all of last year’s roster. On the other side of him, some frosh were flirting with Derek and Will wished he could just go back to his dorm.

“I think it’s fun!” was Chowder’s rather predictable response. Will huffed and turned to get some support from Derek.

“Is that you on the back of the fall schedule?” one of the frosh asked.

Her friend nodded. “We like, need to know.”

“Oh?” Derek said, a smirk on his face and an air of nonchalance in his voice. “Yeah that’s me.”

“Oh God,” Will said, mortified. Was Derek actually flirting back with these people?

“It’s such a good picture.”

“You look amazing,” the guy agreed. Will clenched his fist under the desk. Out of the corner of his eye, he was aware that whoever had come over to talk to Chowder had turned towards him and quickly backed away, turned off by whatever was written over Will’s face.

“It was good lighting,” Derek said casually.

“Maybe, but I think it would be difficult for them to catch you in bad lighting.”

Will might have cringed at the line if he wasn’t so worried that Derek was going to end up fobbing them off with an excuse that would leave them knowing that he was in a relationship and wondering who with, or if he wasn’t so on edge that maybe they were making Derek uncomfortable, and couldn’t they just leave him alone or get his autograph and move on like everybody else had?

“What do you think about Alves Guimaraes?” someone asked. They might have been talking to Will, because there was a long pause before Chowder answered, stating how good it was for men’s hockey as a whole and how of course he had no idea what name M.A.G. (as social media had started calling him) was going by now, or what team he was on, but Chowder sure was happy to be playing in the same league as such talent. Will tuned his words out and focused on the frosh who were still sat with Derek.

“We’re really looking forward to the game next week,” the guy said, and the girl nodded in agreement. “Good luck for it.”

“Thanks!” Derek said. “Hopefully it will go our way.”

“Maybe you could get me a goal?” the guy pushed.

For the first time, Derek hesitated. “I— Honestly, if I get a goal it’ll be for me and for the team, and for my parents who’ll be there for family weekend.” His face twisted apologetically.

“Oh. Right. Maybe another time? When you’re family’s not there?”

Will wanted to cut in and say that Derek wasn’t interested, but it wasn’t his place to speak for him.

“I’m flattered,” Derek said.

“But,” the girl said, disappointment written on her face.

“I don’t do the whole hook-up thing,” Derek explained. The two of them looked sceptical, but the guy wasn’t ready to give up.

“It doesn’t have to just be a hook-up.”

“In fact, I’m asexual.”

Will’s heart clenched for Derek. It really wasn’t fair that he had to come out just to fend off unwanted advances, and when he thought about it, Will realized that was, in part, his fault. It would probably be easier for Derek if he could just tell people that he was in a monogamous relationship, instead of having to come out to them and leave it vague enough that they would assume he never had sex and was never interested in relationships, instead of him being the hopeless romantic that he was. Will sighed and stared at the table in front of him. He didn’t speak to anybody else who approached them, instead letting Chowder take over the conversations.

“Hey,” Derek said, when after what felt like hours too long the event finally winded down to a close. The room was emptier than before and some tables were being cleared away. “Hey,” Derek repeated, and Will looked up. “Are you okay?”

He didn’t know how to describe the shame and guilt he felt, so he shrugged.

“Was it those frosh?” Derek asked. “You know I can’t stop people flirting with me, Will.”

“I’m not jealous,” Will told him. “I trust you. It was just so obvious how uncomfortable you were by the end and I wish you didn’t have to deal with people being like that.”

“I’m a big boy. I can handle myself. I thought I handled the whole thing pretty well.”

“Yeah.”

“So what?”

Will blinked at him, and Derek frowned back.

“What’s bothering you so much about this, if you’re not jealous?”

Will looked back at his table. They really had to move before somebody paid them too much attention and worked out what their conversation was about. “You had to come out to get them to go away,” he said, standing up and picking up one end of the table.

Derek lifted the other end of the table. “That’s okay. It doesn’t bother me. I’m proud of my asexuality.”

“Okay,” Will said as he started to back up to where the tables were to be stacked. “But it doesn’t mean you should have to come out to random strangers just to get them to go away. That’s not cool.”

“Some people are going to be like that, Will. At least those guys backed off as soon as I said it. They were really nice about it, actually.”

Will chewed on his lips. He would never be able to explain the whole thing to Derek, because he definitely could  _not_ say that he wanted Derek to be able to say that he had a boyfriend. Derek might take it as permission to  _actually_ say that which Will didn’t really want.

It was all so confusing.

* * *

Will found himself telling Ben-the-counselor about Dan when he saw him that Thursday. Ben knew nothing about Will’s sexuality or the relationship he was in, but Will told him about feeling pushed into things he didn’t want to do, and Ben suggested that it felt Dan was trying to take the place of his parents. The upcoming Family Weekend highlighted that Dan was trying to direct the way he led his life, but not supporting Will’s hockey, or in turn the life Will already led. Will frowned at his knees, and tried not to think about it any longer.

At least his day was busy enough that he didn’t have too much time to daydream about his parents being there for his games, or be upset that it was never going to be an option for him. He ate on the walk between counselling and Introduction to Electronics, and had to run to Mathematical Tools for Computer Science. By the time he got to the student center for his afternoon job, he was hungry again, but all he had was an apple that he had to eat sneakily at his desk while he worked on fixing a laptop that had been left there.

* * *

“It highlights Prospero’s position as the oppressor. Where Shakespeare makes Caliban out to be some sort of savage, down to his very name, Cesaire brings it back to colonization.”

“I always thought when we studied the Tempest at school that Prospero wasn’t that great, anyway. Isn’t he sort of power hungry?”

Will glanced at the time. The afternoon in the student center had gone more quickly than he thought, and he had been surprised to hear Derek and Chowder’s voices.

“Sure, but it’s all very ambiguous and it’s framed in a way where he’s still sort of a good guy,” Derek explained. The door swung open and Will could see them walk into the reception area of the student center. “Cesaire is more explicit about it, by making Caliban and Ariel the focus. Hey, Dex.”

Will stapled together the files he had just printed off and smiled at them. “Hi. New assignment?”

“Comparing  _The Tempest_ and  _Une Tempete._ ”

“Cool. Shakespeare and Cesaire?”

Derek stared at him. “Wow. You know that?”

Will nodded seriously. “I do know some writers, you know.”

Derek’s eyes narrowed.

“And you literally just said both their names as you walked through the door.”

“I  _knew_ you didn’t actually know that.”

“Hey! I know who Shakespeare is.”

“Are you finished, Dex? Cait texted and Bitty’s baking  _cookies.”_

Will looked around his desk, and back to the clock. “Clare!” he called to his manager. “I’ve finished this filing, do you need me for anything else?”

“No! Go and have fun with your friends!”

* * *

Back at the Haus, Cait was sat at the kitchen table typing up some class notes and gossiping with Bitty about a couple of her Psychology friends who were in the middle of some relationship drama. The counters were covered in cooling trays stacked with cookies and pies and Bitty had a lump of raw pastry in his hand.

“It’s all very well saying— For the love of God, this song again?” Bitty exclaimed. Will frowned, until he heard Holster’s voice singing along to Adele.

“You know,” Chowder said, “moving into the Haus, I thought Holster would sing a lot more.”

“Is that what you wanted?” Will asked. Holster was loud enough without singing all the time.

“He was waiting till the taddies took him seriously,” Derek said.

Will hummed. That made some sense.

Chowder took a plate of pie from Bitty. “Why wouldn’t they take him seriously?”

It took a while for Will to realize that Bitty was trying to give him some pie holding out a plate for him, too, because he was too busy trying to work out if Chowder was joking or not.

“So,” Cait said later, when Bitty had disappeared to his room. She looked around at all the baked goods.

“So,” Derek said in agreement.

“Did he say anything about what he’s stressed about?” Chowder asked.

Cait shook her head. Will frowned at the cookies, wondering how his friends had all noticed that Bitty was stressed and he hadn’t. “What did he say?” he asked.

“Nothing, really. He was just chatting about relationship stuff with me about some of my friends.”

“It can’t be that,” Derek said with a shake of his head. “What about school stuff? Is he behind?”

Cait shrugged. “Who knows. He actually seems to have been doing some French studying and he didn’t mention having any essays.”

“But it’s midterms soon,” Chowder pointed out. “And there’s hockey as well.”

“We’re not looking as strong as we did this time last year,” Derek said.

Will let out a sigh and looked to the ceiling. It was too early in the season for them to worry about how they were playing. They would get there — he had to believe that. “Are you sure he didn’t say  _anything_ else?”

Cait shrugged. “I don’t think he did? He said something about jam?”

“Jam?”

“He said his mama’s going to be upset but the jam’s just better.”

“What does that even mean?” Derek asked. Everybody shook their heads.

“What makes you think he’s stressed, anyway?” Will finally asked. As far as he could tell there wasn’t anything strange about the conversation, other than whatever the jam thing was.

They stared at him as if he had three heads.

“What?” Will asked.

Derek shook his head. “For someone so smart, you’re so dense sometimes, I don’t understand it.”

“Bitty stress bakes,” Chowder said. “Had you not noticed that he bakes more when he’s upset or stressed?”

Will blinked. “Bitty... always bakes.”

“Yeah but this is more,” Derek told him. “This is because he’s trying to take his mind off of things. Like you do with all the fixing up the Haus stuff.”

Will tensed. Had Derek realized that something had happened before he started fixing the dryer? If so, why hadn’t he asked about it? Or did he think that Will would tell him by himself and was just waiting for the moment. With Will not telling him, maybe Derek thought he didn’t trust him properly. “I don’t—”

“Will. It’s okay. It’s all a part of OCD, right? It’s not like you can help it if sometimes you get anxious for no reason.”

Will clenched one hand into a fist under the table. “Right.”

“Either way,” Cait said. “We should pack these cookies away so that the team don’t all eat them and leave none for the kegsters.”

* * *

Derek’s parents and Chowder’s dad flew up to Boston the next morning to spend the day with them before family weekend officially started. Derek drove to the airport to pick them up and Will and Chowder stayed back at the Haus, waiting. Will baked some cookies in preparation, while Chowder tried to get ahead on his homework.

He hung back when everyone arrived, feeling awkward and lost, and like he shouldn’t really be there. Derek proudly showed his moms around the Haus, because last year they had only seen the dorms and Faber, and Chowder poured his dad a cup of coffee and asked about the flight. Bitty was in class and Ransom and Holster were discussing captain things in the attic, and Lardo was holed up in her art studio. Ollie and Wicky had taken Ollie’s mom to Boston, and the tadpoles probably also had class because Will hadn’t seen them yet. He bit back a sigh. Unfortunately, Chowder noticed.

“Oh! And I’m so rude. Dad, this is Dex! He’s also on the team and he’s Cait’s cousin and he’s my other best friend to Nursey; the one I said I wished could have come too this summer. But he’s said he’s going to try next year.”

Will smiled tightly. “Yeah. Uh. It’s good to meet you, Mr Chow.”

“You too, Dex.”

“He’s Cait’s cousin, too!”

“You mentioned that already,” Mr Chow said.

“Oh. Well now you know. Cait’s coming over when she’s finished with volleyball things. They’re right in the middle of their season now so it’s a bit intense, but also weird, because hockey season has barely even started yet.”

* * *

They went to Jerry’s for a late lunch. Mr Chow asked what Will’s major was, though Chowder’s eyeroll suggested that he already knew, and he questioned them all on how they managed the school-hockey balance. Cait and Derek were happy to talk, bringing up memories from the summer and asking after things Mr Chow had been working on in the house, or at work, or with his neighbor when they were staying with Chowder. Derek’s moms joined in with their own questions about what Mr Chow did for a living, and how Cait liked studying Psychology, and whether Chowder had thought about Marketing.

“You need a good eye for detail,” Xo Nurse told him. “I think it could suit you.”

Chowder hummed thoughtfully, but Will could tell he wasn’t convinced.

“You’ll figure it out, Chris,” Cait said in a soft voice. She patted his hand reassuringly.

“It’s great to see a couple who support each other so much,” Anika said with a smile. “You must be proud,” she added to Mr Chow, who smiled back so that his eyes crinkled.

“I am,” he said. “We were very happy that Caitlin could spend the summer with our family.”

Anika turned to Derek, her smile open and genuine but it made Will tense. She was going to ask him if he was dating anyone, or if he had his eyes on a girl and Derek was going to have to lie and it was all Will’s fault.

“I’m glad you have such a great group of friends around you,” she said. Will wiped his hands on his jeans and waited for her to say something else. She didn’t.

“Me too,” Derek said, matching her smile.

“You’ve been so happy recently.”

“Well, I have a lot to be happy about,” Derek said softly. His eyes landed on Will, but he looked away again, quickly.

“Oh?” Xo asked.

Derek’s eyes widened. “Oh. Well, uh, you know. School’s going well, and... like you say, good friends. Hockey’s good. I—”

It was almost painful to watch him clutch at straws when Will knew exactly what he wanted to tell them. Will felt more relaxed today, though he wasn’t completely sure why, and he worried that this would cause him more anxiety later, but the desire for Derek to feel safe and comfortable here with him and his parents was overwhelming.

“You can—” Will felt everybody’s eyes turn to him. He swallowed nervously. “I mean... I don’t mind...”

A foot pressed against his, and he looked Derek in the eye trying to silently tell him he was okay.

“Yeah?” Derek asked, wonder in his voice.

Will licked away the dryness on his lips and nodded.

“Mom, Ma,” Derek said, though his eyes didn’t leave Will’s. “I’d like to introduce you to my boyfriend, Will. I mean Dex. I mean...”

“Oh!”

It was warm and comforting to see Derek be engulfed in hugs from his moms. Will couldn’t help but smile at how happy they were for their son, and how instantly they supported him. They didn’t make a single comment about how he was too white, too poor, too uptight, too male for their son. There were no side-eyes or suspicious looks about what he could want, or what Derek might see in him. They didn’t even ask Derek if he was sure about this.

The smile faded from Will’s face. He felt strangely empty. He wasn’t disappointed, as that wouldn’t make sense. He was obviously happy that Derek’s moms supported him. He just felt... alone. Even though they were all at a table together, and Derek was officially introducing Will to his family so that didn’t make sense either. Will forced the smile back on his face, and nodded when Cait suggested they get the check and start to make a move.

Derek and his Ma separated from the rest of them, walking off arm-in-arm in a way which made it clear that they were having a private conversation. Will turned his eyes away.

“I’ll show you where it was I met your mom,” Mr Chow said to Chowder who grinned.

“Okay! Cait?”

“Yeah, that would be cool. It wasn’t on River Quad, was it?”

Chowder and Cait dived into a description of how they met as they walked away, leaving Will alone with Xo. He glanced at her with uncertainty. Was this the moment that she told him she disapproved of his being with her son? Or was this when she said all the ways that she thought he could be better, including coming out so that Derek could live freely? Maybe it was just going to be an inquisition so that she could judge him more. He swallowed nervously.

“How long have you and Derek been together?” she asked.

Will bit down on his lip. Inquisition it was. “Uh. It depends when you start counting from? Sort of, uh... December.” He winced as he said it. It was such a long time ago.

She nodded without batting an eyelid. “Do your team know?”

Will stared at the ground as he shook his head. “Only Chowder.” She hummed, and Will didn’t know what to do with that. Was it disapproving or calculating? “I’m sorry,” he said in a rush. “I’m not— I’m not out, and I know that’s not best for him, but I  _can’t.”_

_“_ Oh, sweetheart, it’s okay.”

Will flinched when Xo wrapped an arm around him, but he forced himself to relax into the hug.

“It’s okay,” she repeated. “I completely understand.”

“You... do?”

“I’m a Black trans woman married to another woman, Will. And I was in the closet for years before I even told my own children.”

“Oh.”

She looked across to where Derek and Anika had now disappeared. “Derek wasn’t happy with me for hiding it from him, but he understood eventually, and he’s grown up a lot since then.”

Will frowned. “So... do you think he’ll resent me?”  _He probably already does_ , the voice in Will’s head reminded him.

“No, I don’t think so. He understood why I had to, and as I say, he’s grown up a lot since then. Coming out is your own personal thing. He wouldn’t resent you for being hesitant about letting other people in on it. I’m glad he has you, Will. He was never this happy at PA.”

“I can’t take credit for that. The team— Chowder—”

“You’re a big part of it. Trust me. He loves you.”

“Yeah. I— I love him, too.”

Her hand cupped his cheek. “Good. Now. I believe I’m supposed to be persuading you to come to our house over winter break.”

Will blinked at her. “How do you know about that?”

“He mentioned it when we called earlier in the week to make arrangements. I think he was trying to underplay how much it meant to him, but now that we know what you are to each other...”

Heat rose in Will’s cheeks. “Oh.”

“You know you’re welcome, don’t you? All of us want you there, not just Derek.”

“I... I don’t...”

Xo patted his cheek again and pressed a kiss to Will’s forehead. “I think it’s time to find where they’ve wandered off to.”

* * *

They found Anika and Derek by Derek’s favorite tree in Lake Quad. Will was reluctant to approach them, on the grounds that they might still be having a private conversation, but Xo walked towards them with purpose, and when they saw her, Derek and Anika both looked happy to greet her. Still, Will hung back until Derek rolled his eyes at him and beckoned him over.

“Hi,” Will said, leaning in when Derek wrapped an arm around his waist.

“Thank-you.”

“Well,” Will said, with an awkward shrug. At the moment it seemed okay, and his talk with Xo had at least reassured him that she wasn’t going to tell anybody else, but his mind kept coming back to how easily she had known that he and Derek were in love. If she could state that with such certainty so soon after finding out they were a couple, maybe other people could read it in their faces. The team — all the people who saw them every day — surely they must have some suspicions.

Derek held him close. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. Thank-you. So much. I know this wasn’t easy for you, but I’m so happy you did it.”

“I did it.” Will could hardly believe it.

“Yeah. You did. I’m so proud of you.”

Will swallowed against the lump in his throat and nodded. “Thanks. I— We really need to go and get our naps in.” He didn’t know how much longer he could hang around in public, especially if Derek was feeling particularly clingy now.

Derek smiled and stepped away from him. “Okay. Mom, Ma, we need to get ready for the game later. Is there anything you want to do this afternoon?”

They decided that they would drive into Boston, so Derek gave them directions for the best route out of Samwell, and they parted. Derek and Will went back to Derek’s dorm, where they cuddled into bed.

“Are you okay?” Derek asked, holding Will’s face so that he could look at him properly.

Will did a quick check of his mood. “Yeah. I actually am.”

Derek kissed him on the temple and Will sank into his chest. “Thank-you. I still can’t believe you did that for me. You’re amazing and brave and I love you.”

“Don’t call me brave,” Will mumbled. “When I still can’t—”

_“Hey._ I will call you brave if I want to call you brave. That’s what you are. It was so difficult for you to do that, and you did it anyway.”

“I only did it because you tell your parents everything and it wasn’t fair you had to keep that from them just because of me.”

The laugh that Derek huffed out tickled Will’s cheek. “Like I say. Brave.”

It seemed pointless trying to argue any more, so Will pressed his face into Derek’s shoulder and they shifted around each other until they found a comfortable position. “We should nap.”

Derek’s lips brushed over his hair in response.

* * *

The crowd was always a little louder on Family Weekend — that was to be expected when the entire Birkholtz family were as loud as Holster and when Tangredi cousins had turned up in their masses — but that night it was Shitty and Jack whose voices Will was drawn toward in the crowd. Ransom had warned them before the game that they would be there, but neither of them had managed to get to Samwell early enough to speak to the team so Will almost hadn’t believed it. He definitely hadn’t imagined that the sight of them would uplift and encourage him this much. He suddenly felt much more excited about this game.

They started out strong, carried by the crowd, but it felt like something was missing. Ransom and Holster were on fire, and Bitty was even quicker across the ice than he had been the year before, but their plays didn’t seem to click and the other team had brought their A-game.

They were two down when they left the ice at the end of the first period. Holster gave them a cheering speech, and they were each reminded to think of their friends and families in the crowd. Derek scribbled on the back page of a notepad, and Will assumed he was venting his disappointment in the game so far until he shoved it into Will’s hands and the page turned out to be filled with diagrams of plays.

“We’re approaching their second line all wrong,” Derek said. “We were playing how we would have done against them last year, but they’ve got more speed on the ice now, and a less aggressive strategy.”

Ransom came to sit next to Will and together they bent over Derek’s notepad, discussing what they could do to change the game up.

They started the second period feeling determined and hopeful, and Will could feel the difference. He was on the ice when Ollie knocked the puck into the opposition’s net and Ransom grinned at him and knocked their shoulders together as they switched off.

“That’s it, Dex. Just like that.”

Ransom tied the game three minutes later, off a pass from Bitty who had held the other team off the puck like Will had never seen him do before. Will and Derek exchanged excited grins. It was great to be back on the ice, and it was even better to see their team coming together so early on in the season.

* * *

Jack and Shitty came to visit them in the locker room. Hugs and encouragements were shared all around, but Will didn’t linger to talk to them. Shitty had already promised to be at their season opener kegster that night and while Will wanted to ask Jack about the NHL and the Falconers’ most recent games, he needed to get out of his kit and shower.

He took the shower next to Derek and faced the wall so as not to accidentally look at anybody else.

“So cool of Jack and Shitty to come and watch us play,” Ollie said.

“‘Swawesome,” Wicky agreed.

“Dexy, I forgot—” Derek started. Will held out his shower gel without a word. “Oh. Chill. Here, use this.” Derek took the shower gel and replaced it with a bottle of shampoo.

“I have shampoo, Nursey.”

“Yeah, but mine’s better.”

Will rolled his eyes, but snapped open the shampoo to use all the same.

“Jack’s coming to the kegster?” Holster’s voice boomed from the locker room. “Yes!”

“Oh, chill.”

 


	7. Jack Zimmermann's Girlfriend?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack and Shitty come to the kegster and Shitty has a question. In _completely_ unrelated news, Bitty is acting strange.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning for underage drinking.

The kegster built up with a speed that would never fail to surprise Will. One minute it was only the team there, taping up the restricted areas and setting a mood with Ransom’s playlist, and the next minute the Haus was overrun with people Will didn’t know. He gravitated toward Shitty and helped Chowder lift him up on the kegster. As Shitty drank, Will glanced over to Whiskey and smiled when he saw a can of cola in the tadpole’s hand, then sought out Derek, crouched by the iPod speakers to choose the next song. He hadn’t drunk much yet, so Will didn’t have to worry about him. Tango, however...

“So what’s in this again? It’s really hard to stop drinking it? How many have I even had?”

Will grabbed onto his elbow as soon as Shitty’s feet were back on the floor, before he could wander off and hurt himself.

“That’s a secret recipe!” Chowder told him. “Shitty came up with tub juice. Hey, Shitty, what’s in tub juice?”

“I passed the baton on, Chowder. It’s up to Lardo to decide who gets to know that.”

“How’s law school, Shitty?” Will asked. It was still strange to not have Shitty around all the time and he didn’t particularly want to think about how Lardo was now exclusively in charge of tub juice because Shitty wasn’t around to do it.

“So if I ask Lardo what tub juice has in it, she’ll tell me?”

“Ooh, I don’t know about that, Tangs,” Chowder said. “Like I say, it’s a secret.”

“So, law school!” Shitty cut in, and as he described the very busy day he’d had the day before, Will tried to work out if he actually enjoyed his course or not.

“All right everyone.” Though Jack wasn’t speaking particularly loudly, the team turned to him as naturally as they had when he was still their captain. “You guys played great. It was fun. But I should head out—”

It occured to Will that he hadn’t actually seen much of Jack at all during the kegster. In fact... not at all? But Jack had always been a bit of a wallflower when it came to kegsters, so he must just not have noticed him.

“Hah, brah,” Shitty said, his face twisting strangely before he turned to look at Jack. “Not before you tell us about your girlfriend.”

There was a string of accusation in his voice that made Will cringe. Jack said he didn’t have a girlfriend, but Will couldn’t help but think how he would react if someone started to get suspicious that he was seeing someone. He backed away from the group, feeling small and sick and terrible that he was keeping this from them.

Hands closed around his arms and his back was pulled against someone’s chest. Lips found his ears, whispering a hushing sound. “It’s okay,” Derek muttered. “Nobody’s found out.”

“I—” Will shook his head. How could he explain that he wished they would, but was also terrified of the same possibility.

“Maybe it’s time for us to head out too, huh?” Derek suggested. “Quietly while everyone is distracted by Jack.”

Will wanted to say no: that they had to stay; that they had an obligation to look out for the taddies; that it might help them in the bid for Dibs if they were still there at the end of the night to help shoo people out and escort drunken students home and to clean up the after-kegster mess. There was a lump in his throat, however, and a sick feeling in his stomach. They could come back in the morning to help clear up. When Derek tugged on Will’s elbow again, he followed without objection.

* * *

Halloween passed without much drama, except for Derek’s indignation when he found out that Lardo had taught Tango how to make tub juice (“He asked,” she said with a shrug) and the chirps passed around the team about everything from Bitty’s puck bunny costume to Ransom’s nearly hooking up with March in the middle of the dance floor.

They had to settle down to think about the season going forward on Monday, and the coaches started to review lines following their opening game. Will didn’t have to worry too much, because they had decided to leave the defensive partnerships as they were, but that didn’t stop him from having to adapt to whichever forwards were on the ice with him. Thankfully, the weekend seemed to have brought the team closer together, and they were full of compliments and encouragements for each other throughout their practices during the week. Bitty seemed a little distracted for the first part of the week, but he turned around some impressive goals in their Tuesday morning practice, and when the Haus and Derek and Will crowded around Chowder’s laptop to watch the Falconers play the Sharks that evening he was so cheerful that Will figured he must have just been tired before.

They still had team breakfast on a regular basis, and that at least was similar enough to the year before in a way which didn’t make Will miss Jack, who never talked much at team breakfast anyway, or Shitty, who had debated current affairs with Will and Derek, but they were happy to continue that without his input.

“What if I did consulting?” Ransom asked, loud enough that it was clear he was asking the team as a whole. Will looked up from the article Derek had asked him to read and frowned. Had Ransom indicated before that he might do something other than medicine after Samwell?

“You’d be totally soulless and working for the man,” Derek told him.

Ransom stared at him at length, then turned away and asked again, “What if I did consulting?”

“Aren’t you pre-med?” Tango asked.

“Yeah, but… You know, it’s always good to have a back-up. There’s firms on campus at the moment.”

“Sure,” Will said, nodding. “Holster’s got some first round interviews, right?” he looked to the other captain, who nodded without tearing narrowed eyes away from Ransom.

“Yeah,” Ransom said. “Uh. So do I.”

“What?” Holster asked. There was a bite in his voice which Will expected to hear directed at him, or a LAX bro, or Jack, but not at Ransom. “You don’t want to do consulting.”

Ransom shrugged. “I just thought it was worth a shot. No harm, right?” He gave a shaky laugh that didn’t convince Will so probably hadn’t convinced Holster either.

“Wow, jobs after college,” Chowder said. “I don’t even know my major.”

A tension broke, and Holster turned away from Ransom to focus on his eggs. He stayed quiet for the remainder of breakfast.

* * *

Ransom and Holster’s job hunting seemed to hang over the team like a black cloud. They were tense around each other, in a way Will had never before seen, and it brought the thought of their graduation to the forefront of all their minds. Lardo spent the next few days on edge, even though nobody had asked her what her plans would be. The reason became clear on Saturday when she and Will the Frogs were studying with her in the kitchen and Bitty was procrastibaking brownies.

“Well,” Lardo said, when she had presumably finished the bit of work she had been working on, or come to a natural pause. She slapped her hands on the table as she stood. “Gotta start looking for a new team manager.”

Will’s heart dropped. “Wait. You haven’t started training someone? They have to know our practice times, game times—” Will tapped on the table and then his brownie plate as his mind became overrun with things that the new manager would have to learn and surely did not have time to learn. “Game day procedure! Locker room rules, equipment organization, the  _bylaws._ ”

Lardo just shrugged as she plugged her laptop in. Will was not comforted.

The front door slammed open to announce Chowder’s return from Cait’s volleyball game. “Hello! Mm! Are those brownies?”

Will turned to him desperately. “Lardo’s looking for her replacement.”

Chowder drew his hand back away from the plate. “I don’t want a brownie any more.”

“They’re good, dude,” Lardo said, chewing. Will frowned at her for eating something so crumbly right over her laptop, but she ignored him and looked at Chowder. “How’s the volleyball team doing?”

“Okay! They were really close! Don’t talk about leaving.”

“Does that mean they lost?” Will asked, but the front door opened again and Chowder turned towards the sound and didn’t appear to hear Will’s question.

“Oh shit, brownies,” Derek said, when he walked in.

“Lardo’s finding another manager for us!” Chowder told him.

“Aw, Lardo!” Derek complained around a chunk of brownie.

“Do you really have to go? You could just keep on being our manager,” Chowder said. Will rolled his eyes. Of course Lardo had to go. She had to graduate and she had to find a job that would earn her more than she could get from managing a college hockey team, but she had known this was coming for— well, ever since she took the job as a frosh. She had no excuse for not already finding a replacement and training them up and Will had assumed she was simply waiting for the right time to introduce them to the team. The fact that it had only just occurred to her to find somebody was terrifying for so many different reasons.

“I can’t believe you haven’t already filled the role,” he said. “There’s so much we need to do. Creating the application, and giving people time to respond, and then  _interviews._ And there still has to be time to train them before the end of the season.”

“Nah, this is about the time that applications went up for it my freshman year?” Lardo said with a shrug. “It’s loads of time. I started training up with the previous manager in February. There’s no point starting too early, because there’s not the budget to bring an assistant manager on roadies and stuff.”

“Lardo, please stop talking about you leaving. This is so sad,” Chowder said.

“Leaving us would not be chill,” Derek agreed with his mouth still full of brownie.

“She has to go,” Will said. “She wants to graduate, and not spend the rest of her life at college and picking up after hockey players. We all knew this was coming. Some of us obviously more so than others.” He finished with a shake of the head. He had trusted Lardo to be more prepared than this.

“Dude. Relax. It’ll be okay,” Lardo said.

“Yeah, Dex,” Derek said. “Chill.”

Will dug his teeth into his bottom lip. Relaxing didn’t seem possible with the thought of everything changing next year, and the uncertainty surrounding the future of the team without Lardo.

* * *

The team had a lot of support that weekend, but the games didn’t go their way. Derek was optimistic about their chances in the future and Chowder was more excited about the winning streak the Falconers had been on (“it’s our Jack!”) but Will was terrified that next year, when the senior team players had gone and Lardo was no longer there to pull them together, they would only get worse. Bitty was often tired and struggling to keep it together in practices, which Will expected would only be worse when he hit senior year, and while Ollie and Wicky were decent players, neither of them were leaders. The other juniors were so separated from the team, in their own little clique, that Will couldn’t see either of them being captain the next year which meant that the coaches would likely be looking to Will’s year, or maybe Whiskey, who was now looking like their star player despite being only a freshman. And yet, Whiskey hadn’t much bonded with the team, so it was hard to see them voting for him.

Next year was going to be awful.

* * *

“Is anyone going to Annie’s?” Holster asked as they walked away from Faber.

“I have to get to class,” Chowder said apologetically.

“I could go for Annie’s,” Derek said. “Dex?”

“Oh, uh, sure.” He probably wouldn’t buy a coffee, but it was easy enough in a group to get away with not having anything.

“We should ask Bitty, too. He’s usually up for it. Where did he go?”

Holster frowned and looked around at the various cliques walking away from hockey practice together.

“He seemed to be in a bit of a rush to leave?” Chowder said. “Which is strange, because I thought my class was the soonest after practice of all the team on Wednesdays.”

“No, he doesn’t have a class now,” Ransom said. “Maybe a meeting with his advisor?”

“Strange of him to schedule it this early,” Will commented.

“Well. No matter. D-man trip to Annie’s it is!” Holster sounded cheered by the idea, so Will let go of his wondering about where Bitty had gone.

“I’ll get a table,” Will said, as the other three joined the early morning Annie’s line.

“What about your coffee?” Holster asked.

“I don’t want one.”

“So, Rans,” Derek said, when he got to the table Will was reserving. He had two cups, and put one of them in front of Will. “How does it feel to not be the one who has to rush off for school straight after practice?”

“Uh. What’s this?” Will asked.

“Small latte with an extra shot.”

“I didn’t want a coffee.”

“Nah,” Derek said with a grin, “You didn’t want to  _pay_ for a coffee. It’s already paid for. And if you try to take it back or not drink it, then they’ll just have to throw all that lovely, expensive, single origin coffee down the drain.”

“Why would you get single origin?” Will asked in exasperation, but he wrapped his hands around the coffee cup. Like fuck was he wasting a good cup of coffee. “That’s so unnecessary.”

“Down the drain,” Derek repeated, dragging every syllable out. “Rans?”

“Weird,” Ransom said. “The whole of this year has been weird, actually. I never thought I’d see the day Bitty was busier than me, and now you’ve managed to bully Dex into accepting a coffee you bought him.”

“Explains him being so tired all the time, though,” Will said, running a thoughtful finger around the rim of his cup. It hadn’t been so rare to see Bitty tired the year before from a night of baking or an early morning of checking practice with Jack, but this year seemed different. Maybe he was just finally getting all his work done, but there would be mornings he looked exhausted, and yet there were no new baked goods in the Haus and it wasn’t like  _Jack_ could be blamed any more if Bitty wasn’t sleeping enough.

Holster sighed. “Yeah. This morning— But, no need for you two to worry about it. We’re the captains, and we have this under control.”

Ransom nodded in agreement. “Right. No need to worry about Bitty. Let’s talk about  _you two,_ instead.”

“Uh.”

Will glanced to the side to see Derek looking back at him with confusion and apprehension written across his face. “Us two?”

“Sure. It feels like ages since we checked in with you. How are things in the lives of our Frogs?”

“Uh,” Will said, again, as Derek responded with a shrug.

“Everything’s chill.”

“Classes are good?” Ransom prodded.

“Coaches would tell you if they weren’t,” Will reminded him, looking at the heart in his latte with a frown.

Holster’s sigh suggested that Will had missed the point, but Derek cut in with an enthusiastic run down of his classes. He rarely got to talk about Literature with the team.

* * *

“I don’t think they know,” Chowder said.

The first fifteen minutes of the Falconer’s game had passed in silence — the three of them crammed on Chowder’s bed and his laptop on Derek’s knees in the middle — but they had been talking about coffee with Ransom and Holster that morning before the game began, and it didn’t take long to realize Chowder was continuing that conversation.

“If they knew,” Chowder pressed, “They wouldn’t have asked how your classes are going. They’re just trying to be good captains and check in with the team, that’s all.”

“Or they were trying to get the conversation off Bitty,” Derek suggested.

Will frowned, but the end of the commercial break gave him excuse enough to shush them and turn his attention back to the game.

“It’s a shame Bitty’s missing the game,” Chowder said.

Will hummed. Bitty had become so invested in the Falconers, watching every game and every Falcs TV episode. It felt strange him not being there and potentially missing the game completely, and the Bitty of their freshman year would never have left the Haus without half the team knowing where he was going, let alone disappeared for an entire day. Will hoped he was okay.

* * *

The professor was only going over last class’s quiz and Will had already figured out where he had gone wrong on the questions he had lost marks on, so he didn’t feel too guilty about checking his phone when it buzzed again.

> **Frog Group Chat**  
>    
>  **Chowder**  
>  Bitty’s being so weird?  
>  I only asked him what he was so happy about and why he was tired and where he was yesterday.  
>  Was that intrusive?  
>    
>  **Nursey**  
>  idk c  
>  maybe  
>    
>  **Dex**  
>  It’s not bad to be worried about him.  
>  He  **did** just disappear after all. But if he’s happy, that’s good?  
>    
>  **Chowder**  
>  Dex, aren’t you in eeng200  
>    
>  **Nursey**  
>  always find it weird that electrical engineering pretends to be english  
>    
>  **Dex**  
>  (Eye Roll)  
>  He’s not going over anything important at the moment.  
>  What else did Bitty say?  
>    
>  **Chowder**  
>  Nothing  
>  He kind of snapped  
>  But it’s okay!  
>  He just needs some space I think  
>    
>  **Nursey**  
>  c  
>    
>  **Chowder**  
>  I’m okay!  
>  I shouldn’t have pushed him  
>  I should go apologize before the others all get home and start asking him the same things.  
>    
>  **Nursey**  
>  c  
>    
>  Chowder  
>  nursey  
> 

The person next to Will put his hand up, which meant that the professor was asking them questions. He hastily put his phone away.

* * *

Bitty was slightly less tired on Friday, but still not fully himself.

“Chill, Poindexter.” Derek clapped a gloved hand onto Will’s helmet as they warmed up for their game.

Will frowned at Bitty who was mid-yawn. “He’s—”

“He’ll be okay. We’ve just got to push through and play, remember? Focus on us, not on Bitty.”

Will nodded and reached out his stick to catch a stray puck. He knocked it to Derek who raised an eyebrow at him and volleyed it back. Will hit it towards Chowder. His puck deflected uselessly back to the blue line. Derek was right. He needed to focus on himself, rather than keep worrying about Bitty.

* * *

“So did Bits say any more?”

Will groaned and hit Nursey across the tummy. It was bad enough they had fallen asleep on Chowder’s floor, but did he really have to talk so  _loudly_ so early in the day.

“He must have forgiven me because he came and hid in here when Ransom tried interrogating him, but he was doing an essay and I thought it would be better to let him get that done.”

“Shush,” Will muttered into his pillow of hoodies.

“Aw, got a headache, old man?” Cait asked. Somebody prodded Will in the thigh.

Will shook his head, even though it did hurt a bit and he felt sick. The last cup of tub juice had probably been one too many.

“You’d better wake up before practice,” Derek said. “So he just did his essay? Didn’t say anything about where he had been?”

“Nothing!” Chowder confirmed. “I didn’t want to ask when he’d already got upset by that earlier. Do you want to watch the Falcs game or the Rangers one tonight?”

“I’d watch the Rangers, but I know you would prefer to see the Falcs against the Aces, and that’s okay. Why don’t you come round to mine and we can have both on? Or I’ll stay in my room with the Rangers and you three can watch the other game.”

* * *

The mystery of what was going on with Bitty continued, with no new clues as they started the new week. He didn’t disappear any more, but he was still distracted by his phone and yet his Twitter account was eerily quiet other than a few vague and indecipherable comments.

He continued to be tired every time they saw him, despite going up to his bedroom while Derek and Will were still at the Haus on more than one evening.

* * *

After classes on Thursday afternoon, Will met Derek outside the Humanities building to go to the Haus together. As they walked, Derek tapped at his phone with a familiar pensive expression.

“What’s your poem about, then?” Will asked.

Derek blinked as he was pulled out of his thoughts. “Oh. Hi. Uh, in my foreign poetry seminar yesterday we were looking at this French piece about modern day Romeo and Juliet and the extra credit assignment is to rewrite it with our own take on it. What other reasons in modern day society might Romeo and Juliet be forced to keep their relationship secret. Why might people disapprove? The original has a Muslim Romeo and a Jewish Juliet.”

Will hummed, but he felt a pit of uneasiness in his stomach.

“I considered Muslim Juliet and Catholic Romeo. And then I considered Black Juliet and White Romeo. And… Well, I was trying to avoid going for them being a gay couple because  _everyone_ is going to do that, but then I thought there’s a reason why everyone is going to do that. Anyway, I went for lesbians in the end. Daisy and Rosalina.”

Will stopped walking. “You are kidding me, right?”

“Nope!”

“You’re doing your serious Romeo and Juliet poetry assignment on Mario Kart characters?”

“I’m doing it on  _us,_ Dexy. It’s symbolism. Even as video characters, we’re forced to hide ourselves and go about our lives in this fucked up heteronormative world where everyone keeps trying to pair you up with Luigi.”

“Wait, who’s Luigi?”

“Rosaline. Or Paris. Or maybe Rosalina is Rosaline and Daisy is Juliet and Luigi is Romeo.”

Will shook his head in exasperation. “I meant in real life, Nurse.”

Derek groaned. “No, no, Luigi is a  _concept._ The idea of you being straight.”

“I don’t understand,” Will told him as they started walking again. They were near the Haus now, and he was aware that they should be moving onto another topic soon.

Derek just sighed in response, and they fell silent for the last few yards to the Haus.

Tango’s voice met them as they walked into the den. “Don’t you think secrets make everything more difficult, though?”

“Not really,” Whiskey replied with a shrug.

“What’s up, bros?” Derek asked, jumping into a chair in what should have been a smooth movement, but he misjudged it and toppled over, chair and all. Will stared at him, unimpressed.

“Are you okay?” Tango asked, running over to help.

“I’m great. What’s the secret?”

“Nothing,” Whiskey said.

“It’s a secret, Nursey!” Tango told him. “That means we can’t say.”

“Yeah, I— Whatever.”

“But, hypothetically—”

“Tango,” Whiskey cut in with a frown.

“Hypothetically,” Tango repeated, “what do you think of people who keep relationships a secret?”

Derek glanced at Will. “That’s their choice. Usually there’s a good reason for it.”

Tango hummed. “Maybe. But don’t you think if they keep it a secret too long, it can’t really work out?”

Will picked at the knee of his jeans.

“It depends,” Derek said. “We were just talking about Romeo and Juliet, actually, and of course they kept their relationship a secret and it was pretty much doomed to fail.”

“Exactly!” Tango said.

“But,” Derek added, “you have to consider whether it was keeping it a secret that caused their relationship to fail, or whether it was the failed communication between them, or the circumstances surrounding why they were keeping it a secret. Then, of course, the whole murder thing didn’t help.”

The air seemed to have been taken out of Will’s lungs. “I need the toilet,” he muttered and fled the room.

Doomed to fail.

Doomed to fail.

_Doomed to fail._

“Dex? Are you okay?” Bitty was staring at him in concern from the staircase.

“Uh. Yeah.”

“I’m just saying,” Tango could be heard saying from the den, “If you were in a relationship, why wouldn’t you want to tell people? Why keep it secret in the first place?”

Bitty’s hand tensed around the bannister. “Well what got him talking about that?” he asked, his voice strangely high.

“I don’t know,” Will said. “He thinks someone’s in a secret relationship, I guess.”

“Oh,” Bitty said. “I... I’m going to make a pie.”

Will waited until he had disappeared into the kitchen before he sank down to sit on the stairs, his head in his hands.

“Will.” Derek crouched in front of him. Will wondered when he had left the den. “Will, it was just a stupid conversation. Tango doesn’t get it.”

“We’re— We’re Romeo and Juliet. We’re doomed to fail. I’m— Fuck, I’m so sorry.”

“No. Will,  _no._  I don’t believe that.”

“How’s it any different?”

“It’s completely different. For starters? We didn’t decide we were in love with each other and needed to get married the night we met. Second, we’re both adults. We’re not going to resort to ridiculous fake suicide plots to run off together. And third we have a good reason for keeping it secret. At the moment, it’s the best thing for us. And you’ve been really good about talking to me about it. I know where we stand. I’m not going to push you, okay?”

Will gripped onto his hands. “I’m going to go back to my dorm,” he said.

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“No. I just want to think a bit. I need—”

“Okay.” Derek glanced down the corridor before he pressed a quick kiss to Will’s temple. “I understand. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Will said, and he gave Derek’s hand a squeeze to reassure him that they were okay.

* * *

He spent the rest of his day distracting himself with homework, texting Chowder, and hate-reading posts on Facebook. He should probably unfriend all the assholes from high school, but at that moment it was better to read those and refuse to let himself respond, than it was to let himself Google secret relationships in literature.

> **Nursey**  
>    
>  are you coming back to the haus for the falcs game?  
>    
>  **Dex**  
>  No  
>    
>  **Nursey** ****  
>  you okay, though?  
>    
>  **Dex**  
>  I don’t know  
>  I think so  
>    
>  **Nursey**  
>  I could come over?  
>    
>  **Dex**  
>  No, stay and watch the game.  
>    
>  **Nursey**  
>  ok  
>  ly  
>    
>  **Dex**  
>  Love you, too  
>    
>  **Nursey**  
>  you’re not mad at me?  
>    
>  **Dex**  
>  No, I’m not mad. It’s just frustrating. But that’s me, not you. It’s this whole situation. And feeling like we have to keep it a secret.  
>  I kind of wish I could have Tango’s view on it.  
>    
>  **Nursey**  
>  tango only thinks that because he has no filter  
>  he can’t imagine not just saying what’s on his mind  
>  I bet he was one of those children who always told everybody what their birthday presents were going to be before they opened them.  
> 

 

Will let out a shaky laugh. Derek was probably right.

> **Nursey**  
>  u sure you’re not coming over for the game? shitty just turned up  
>    
>  **Dex**  
>  I’m sure  
>  Say hi to Shitty  
>  Or  
>  Maybe don’t  
>  He’ll be around another time, anyway  
>  I just can’t deal with people right now  
>  **Nursey**  
>  ok  
> 

Will sighed and curled up on his bed. He considered reaching for his laptop and watching the game on there so that he knew how it played out, but he felt too tired, and the thought of having to concentrate on a game was too much.

He must have fallen asleep because it was after two a.m. when he next checked his phone.

 

> **Nursey**  
>  bitty dropped a pie  
> 

 

Will frowned. What was going  _on_ with Bitty recently? He had been so unlike himself. Will rolled out of bed and put on a pair of sliders to go next door. Derek’s door was unlocked.

“Derek?”

There was a grunt in response.

“Can I come in?”

Derek didn’t reply straight away and Will wondered if he had gone back to sleep. He started to back out the room and close the door again when Derek mumbled, “Yeah.”

Will kicked his sliders off and crawled into bed with him. “Bitty dropped a pie?”

“I’m worried about him,” Derek said.

“Me too,” Will whispered. He shuffled in closer to Derek and put an arm around him.

* * *

Will and Derek went over to the Haus the next day to see if Bitty was okay, but only Chowder was there.

“What happened last night?” Derek asked.

“Nothing after you left,” Chowder said.

“He actually dropped it?” Will asked, flopping onto the couch.

“What, you won’t take my word for it?” Derek asked.

Chowder nodded. “It was all over the floor. It was so bad, Dex, oh my God.”

Will chewed on his lip. “I hope he’s okay.”

“Yeah.”

They fell into a worried silence.

“Where is everyone?” Derek asked.

“No idea,” Chowder said with a shrug. “I woke up and nobody was here. I texted, but nothing.”

Will frowned. It probably wouldn’t be strange on any other day, because contrary to popular belief, they did all have friends outside the hockey team, and it was a Friday so it was always possible that the seniors had meetings with their advisors, or Lardo had booked an art room, or a myriad of other possibilities. But, he felt like something must be up given that Bitty had dropped a pie the night before.

“I’ll get some breakfast ready,” he said, because they would be late to the dining hall if they went now.

* * *

They settled into their usual Frogs’ Friday (minus Cait who had a deadline followed by a volleyball game), enjoying the peace of each other’s company without conversation. They were each on their own screens, getting ahead on homework or else procrastinating when they heard voices outside. Holster’s voice carried further than anybody else’s, but Will found himself frowning when he heard Shitty amongst them.

The front door swung open and even though they were expecting it, all three of them jumped.

“All right!” Bitty was saying, sounding surprisingly chipper. “And after you nap in my room, we’ll gather up the frogs.”

Derek caught Will’s eye. Will raised an eyebrow back.

“Nap in Bits’ room,” Ransom said. Will could practically hear the smirk.

“Fine. Ultra fine. Infinite coins in the sin bin,” Holster said.

“Oh my God,” Chowder mouthed.

“Who do you think?” Will mouthed back, but neither of them got what he was saying, so he texted them on their groupchat instead.

Chowder shrugged.

 

> **Frog Group Chat**  
>    
>  **Derek**  
>  It might not be someone we know  
>  Just a new boyfriend  
>    
>  **Chowder**  
>  Oh!  
>  Maybe it’s that guy!  
>  You know, who watches his vlog!  
>  From the SA fan appreciation day!  
>    
>  **Dex**  
>  Yeah, he was cute  
>    
>  **Derek**  
>  ..................

 

Will stuck his tongue out at Derek.

There were still people outside, who they could hear laughing and chirping from the front yard. Shitty was one of them, but the other took Will a while to place, because he didn’t expect to hear that voice at Samwell today, and yet… 

“Is that Jack?” Chowder asked. It went silent in the hallway for a moment, though Shitty and Jack could still be heard outside, and then Ransom leaned his head into the den.

“Hey, Bits, I don’t think you need to worry about rounding the frogs up.”

“What’s Jack doing here? Doesn’t he have a game tomorrow?”

“BITTY HELP!” Shitty shouted from outside.

“Jack Laurent Zimmermann, this is the  _opposite_ of taking a nap,” Bitty shouted back.

“Hey, Bits,” Derek said. “What’s going on?”

Bitty appeared in the doorway, but his attention was directed outside. Jack appeared behind him, with leaves caught on his jacket.

“Hi.”

“We—” Bitty looked back at Jack, who smiled back at him encouragingly. Will felt his eyebrows going up into his hairline. That look was so soft, so  _adoring,_ and everything seemed to fall into place. Bitty took a deep breath. “We have something to tell you.”

“You got this, Bits?” Jack asked.

“Yeah.” The look Bitty gave him felt so intimate that Will had to look away. “You go and have a nap.”

Jack’s hand brushed against Bitty’s back as he disappeared toward the stairs. Bitty walked into the den and the frogs moved so they were sat on the couch, where he could address them all together. Derek’s arm pressed against Will’s.

“Me and Jack,” Bitty said. “We’re dating.”

“Wow,” Will said, mentally trying to work out if he should have known sooner. It seemed so obvious now Bitty said it. “Okay.”

Chowder’s exclamation drowned out Will and Derek. He was definitely surprised.

* * *

After Bitty had explained how Jack had first kissed him at graduation, and how they had kept their subsequent relationship a secret ever since, they tried to turn their attention back to homework. Will opened up the problem set he had to work through before his class on Tuesday, but now that the upperclassmen and Shitty were back, chirping Bitty relentlessly and talking loudly about everything and anything, it was impossible to get anything done.

After a while, Bitty sighed and looked at the time on his phone. “I should go and wake Jack up.”

Will knew he had to say something; that he had to acknowledge that Jack had come out to them. He hovered around the kitchen as Bitty and Jack flirted and Bitty packed up some food for him to take back to Providence.

Jack caught sight of Will and invited him in with a smile. “Hey, Dex.”

“Hi, uh. I just wanted to say— Thank you. For trusting us.”

Confusion flickered over Jack’s face. “Okay?”

“You weren’t out before now, and I guess you probably still don’t want to be out because the NHL— Well, it’s the NHL. But you told us second out of anyone, so thank you.”

He wasn’t sure where the lump in his throat had come from, but it was getting increasingly difficult not to cry.

“Thank you, Dex,” Jack said. “You made it easy for me to trust you. And I appreciate knowing that you’ll have Bittle’s back.”

Bitty patted Will on the arm. “Come on, Dex. You can help me make some muffins.”


End file.
